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Eyes Wide Shut Marketing
A look at the Eyes Wide Shut marketing campaign
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Contrary to the usual summer flicks strategy, Eyes Wide Shut didn't benefit from any big budget intended to invade each billboard, radio spot, and French fries container in town. Even more surprising, publicity has been generated by a word-of-mouth through sulphurous rumours regarding its mysterious shooting.
One and only one word has led the film's publicity: sex. And the interest in the movie more than its director or its actors can be summarized in a single question: Is this movie that hot?
The clever marketing tactic was at first to let the craziest rumours spread out, thus creating curiosity and much anticipation for the movie. Indeed for the last two years we read that Cruise had been seen as a travestite, that the couple was showing its genitals, that their love scene was not fake, that a sexologist had been hired to teach the couple how to make love and so on.
The second step consisted in an intriguing preview accompanied by a disturbing soundtrack from the really lucky Chris Isaak (one can remember his "Wicked Game" in Wild At Heart).
Finally, Cruise and Kidman have skillfully clouded the issue, going public about their relationship and contradicting each other from one interview to another, without however giving any clue about the film but their adoration for Stanley Kubrick. For example, while in one interview
Cruise was explaining he had never been jealous of Kidman, he was saying the opposite in the next one.
This marketing startegy was worth waiting for. Far from hammering us with its $, it parsimoniously knew how to tease our curiosity while cleverly taking advantage of our obsessions. Instead of a loud explosive preview giving away all the story, we were offered an artistic one that bewitched us. The only dark shadows on the wall were the addition of computer generated characters to hide the graphic scenes of the orgy in order to get an R rating instead of an NC17, and the use of the film's website when its director died as a promotion tool by and for his widow.
Most important is the non exploitation of the director's death as a marketing weapon, what give us back some hope regarding the integrity of some players in a world with no rules.
Fred Thom
 Eyes Wide Shut feature
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Eyes Wide Shut Analysis
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