LAS VEGAS — Truth in advertising can mean box-office success. That is one lesson — along with being careful about bad-boy behaviour, alcohol and drug consumption, loose chickens, pet tigers, and taser guns wielded by schoolchildren — that can be learned from filmmaker Todd Phillips and his megahit wonder, The Hangover.
“So many times in marketing, it is misleading,” Phillips says in interviews for this week’s DVD and Blu-ray debut of The Hangover, which surprisingly generated $260 million in worldwide box office. It cost only $35 million and is expected to be an enormous bestseller in home entertainment because both men and women love it, critics love it, movie moguls love it, even chickens love it. It became the highest grossing R-rated comedy ever in North America, muscling aside Wedding Crashers.
Critically, says Phillips, his campaign sold The Hangover truthfully — as a gonzo but lovable comedy about immature men getting up to silly high jinks at their own bachelor party in Vegas while their women stew back home in Los Angeles.
“I think when you mislead people,” Phillips says, “you end up with disappointed people and they tell their friends.”
So, it is better to tell the truth about your movie, no matter what genre it is in. “Transformers delivered exactly what they said it was, whether you like it or not,” Phillips says. “The Hangover did exactly the same thing. And when you deliver on your marketing materials — because people are so used to getting tricked — (they’re happy) when it lives up to expectations!”
The next trick is to make the same fans buy the myriad DVD and Blu-ray editions. The Hangover DVD comes in a stripped-down, one-disc, rental version with no extras. It also comes as a two-disc Special Edition with a digital copy for transfer to portable devices and plenty of extra silly stuff (although not as much as on a Judd Apatow DVD).
The Hangover gag reel is lame, considering how genuinely funny this movie is. Better is a collection of 100 photographs that fill in some blanks on what really happened that fateful first night at Caesar’s Palace and on the Vegas strip. The special edition also offers both the theatrical cut and an “unrated” cut eight minutes, six seconds longer.
But nothing raunchy is added. “It’s funny when they call things unrated,” Phillips admits. “How much more unrated could it be? It’s actually scenes that don’t make the (theatrical) cut for whatever reasons. It’s stuff that either slows the rhythm down or it’s a story point that we don’t need to get to. So it’s always tricky. I always have a hard time with the wording of these things. They’re not director’s cuts because my director’s cut is the movie. They’re extended cuts.”
The Blu-ray, also a special edition, has everything on the special edition DVD and a little more, such as the ability to turn the commentary — Phillips teaming with Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms — into a picture-in-picture option. Or calling up a compilation of the cursing scenes.
“I think,” Phillips says of offering Hangover fans his movie on DVD and Blu-ray, “people went to the movie already. They want more!”
And they want it now. They don’t want to wait for the sequel that is coming in 2011. So that means giving them the extended cut of The Hangover as well as all the bonus materials. Phillips’ own favourite among the extras is a reel of Ken Jeong’s mad improv moments. “It’s weird because he does the most horrible accent and says the meanest things — but Ken is so sweet!”
Meanwhile, with the Blu-ray, there are a variety of optional collectibles packaged with it, depending on which store chain you frequent. HMV adds a souvenir Vegas guide, Zagat Sin City Parties 2010; Future Shop offers a souvenir Hangover bottle opener; and Best Buy offers a Baby Carlos T-Shirt.
