This is topic Juxtaposition of Trailers in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 05-26-2000, 10:54 PM:
I was at the cinema today and there was a trailer for Shaft... a movie which will try to exploit stereotypes based on the "cool black guy" theme. Soon after that, there was a trailer for The Ladies Man which is based on a Saturday Night Live character who shows how ridiculous those black stereotypes are. Whose idea was it to show the trailers in that order?Can you give other examples of strange trailer juxtaposition?
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 05-26-2000, 11:34 PM:
We are running a public service ad that says; "..and noisy watercraft tramatize wildlife.." After that, we are running an ad for Ski-Doo jet-skis.
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 05-26-2000, 11:41 PM:
We are running a Screenvision anti-drug ad before....Road Trip.
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-26-2000, 11:51 PM:
This isn't funny, but...I remember very briefly running a promotional trailer for "feed the homeless" right after the big flashy "go to the concession stand and pig out" trailer. The homeless ad pictured people starving to death and lots of other very depressing images of that nature. What a way to make people feel good about spending $10 on a drink and popcorn just before their movie starts!(No, I did not choose to run the trailers in that order as a very sick joke. That command came from the big people upstairs. These corporate people sometimes never seem to use common sense in their trailer programming.) 
Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 05-26-2000, 11:59 PM:
We're running a US Navy recruitment ad. Right after it we have the Perfect Storm trailer 
.
Posted by Charles Lubner (Member # 157) on 05-27-2000, 12:28 AM:
Recently at my theatre we were running a trailer that showed mentally and physically challenged children in "normal" society, with a song in the background to the tune of "Don't laugh at us, don't call us names" sponsored by the Variety Club. Anyways, it was nearly impossible not to laugh, because the trailer was only printed in flat format, yet we were required to run it on scope films as well. The end result: short and fat stubby legged retarded kids running around a park with a goofy song in the background.....
I felt bad, but it was impossible not to laugh. :-(
Posted by Scott Magie (Member # 368) on 05-27-2000, 12:33 AM:
Way back when we were showing "Half-Baked", we received a written notification asking us not to run our Anti-Drug PSA before it. I can't remember who sent it... probably the anti-drug people... Carmike wouldn't care and neither would the distributor.
I just remember thinking it was funny.The other fun trailer combos to program are the twin-movies... such as "Armageddon" & "Deep Impact"... or "Volcano" & that other movie about volcanoes... etc.
Or that Spy Who Shagged Me trailer with an Episode 1 trailer.
------------------
Scott A. Magie
scoooot@hotmail.com
"Anybody wanna peanut?"
Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 05-27-2000, 12:45 AM:
I'm also reminded that, late in the summer of 1983, we were running a double feature of Snow White and WarGames. I don't know who paired up those movies. But, anyway, our signs above the auditorium doors weren't as nice as they are today. We had to spell out the film titles with individual letters (which were stored in the booth). And there wasn't enough room to spell out the full titles of two movies. Sooo...We would put things like "Snow and War" above the door or "White and Games." Then my friend (and fellow employee) posted the best title combination and we ran with it. The sign read "War Dwarfs" for the rest of the run.
Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 05-27-2000, 02:03 AM:
How about programming for The Mummy.End of Days
Inspector Gadget
Stigmata
Paul
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-27-2000, 06:43 AM:
Is anyone else playing the "Psychic Child" Moviefone ad? Apparently, this is considered to be disturbing to children, and is only supposed to be running with R-rated films. Unfortunately, the trailers arrived before the "only show these with R-rated films" letter, so at least one theatre was showing them before "Dinosaur" for a few days...
Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 05-27-2000, 06:56 AM:
And who can forget that incredibly long, boring and totally inappropriate trailer for Inventing the Abbotts which we had to endure before each and every showing of the Star Wars (episode 4) Special Edition a few years back?
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 05-27-2000, 06:59 AM:
Greg's post about War Dwarves reminds me of my all time favorite marquee. In North Conway, NH, our mall theatre doesn't have an outdoor marquee due to sign ordinances, so the films playing there are listed on the side of the marquee of the twin theatre down the street. Due to the lack of space, and a strange combination of films, one week the marquee read 'Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot JFK'. I still have a picture somewhere.
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 05-27-2000, 08:29 AM:
Scott:
My girlfriend is the mom in, "Psychic Child." She said they shot a fairly complex scene where the kid waves a knife around (like Jack in "The Shining") but dropped it after that one kid shot another at school a few months ago. We didn't get any notice about only running it with "R" films.There was always a sort of contest to see who could change the marquee, bringing up and moving the fewest letters.
At a theater up the street, someone left the ladder out after changing the letters on the their marquee. The next morning the cops called the manager. Someone had put the usual swear words on the marquee.
Kids had fun knocking off the "y" in "Three Men and a Little Lady."
And knocking off one of the "n"'s in "Pennies from Heaven." We finally spelled it "Pennys."
A savings bank nearby had a sign: "Tuck-a-buck-a-day-away." A graffiti artist did a perfect job changing the T to an F.
Posted by Paul Goulet (Member # 297) on 05-27-2000, 08:49 AM:
I remember when we were playing "The Goofy Movie" for the Matinee and "Sleeping with the Enemy" at night. Because of space limitations the Ad in the Newspaper ended up reading "GOOFY SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY"
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 05-27-2000, 09:07 AM:
These are all good combos! I can't think of any to offer myself, other than noting that nothing will make you sweat like running an early-morning kid's show rental of "Annie" in a porno house! (Man, you triple and quadruple-check for the right reels!)------------------
Better Projection Pays!
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-27-2000, 01:16 PM:
Some years ago, we were running a Cinema Concepts no-smoking ad immediatly followed by their "Magnificent Munchies" concession ad. The smoking ad ended with the words, "please extinguish all smoking materials." From that we went right into "GOT THE MUNCHIES???"You could always tell the pot-smokers in the audience because they would crack-up every time that combo came on. (took me awhile to figure out what they were laughing at, being a beer drinker myself!)
Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 05-27-2000, 01:41 PM:
One marquee at a drive in I had seen in 'National Lampoon True facts":HOWLING 4
CASUAL SEX
and my all-time favorite marquee at the sacramento Cinedomes in huge foot-high green letters: summer 95 I believe...
SEVEN
CLUELESS
SHOWGIRLS
thats one still cracks me up
or for a while we had to place two or more titles side to side at Sebastopol and whether intentionally or not ( i think it was after the first time tho) we had a line of the marquee reading:
A TIME TO KILL JACK
then it changed to:
A TIME TO KILL EMMA
or the overhead mylar box of a split of George Of The Jungle and Air Force One ended up reading 'JUNGLE FORCE'
or marquees ending up reading with perfect sentences thus:
RETURN TO ME
ERIN BROCKOVICH
WHERE THE HEART IS
or in sonoma we had the Sonoma Valley Film Festival and all they put was 'Film Festival' on the marquee so the marquee read:
ERIN BROCKOVICH
FILM FESTIVAL
(yeah! all one of those Erin Brockovich films) heheh
enough for now
Aaron
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-27-2000, 04:53 PM:
We had a marquee kid once who misspelled:FRESH HORSES
as
FRESH HORES
Posted by Ethan Harper (Member # 472) on 05-27-2000, 08:05 PM:
i remeber on time when i was working at cinemark we had to run NCN commercial ads. One of those ads that we had to run was the join the marines ad. this was placed on Saving private Ryan. After a day or so we were told to take it off. hence join the marines and get your body parts blown off! also this trailer was found on a couple of kids movies which then in turn scared the kids and made them cry before the movie.we were also told to take this trailer off.
------------------
--"That's my story and i'm sticking to it!"--
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 05-28-2000, 06:19 AM:
We ran:"Take This Job And Shove It" / "Any Which Way You Can"
I think there's something in that for all of us.
(ok, so we didn't really run that double, but it's all I could think of right now)
Posted by Jeffry L. Johnson (Member # 453) on 05-28-2000, 09:17 AM:
One of my favorite split screen combinations became a travelogue:Trip to Bountiful
Brazil
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 05-28-2000, 10:06 AM:
>>FRESH HORES<<Mike, you just reminded me of something someone told me about, from a drive-in in the sixties. On film-change night, they were bringing-in a low-budget western called HOT SPUR. They placed it on the marquee as:
HOT SPURM
------------------
Better Projection Pays!
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 05-29-2000, 02:22 AM:
Many people come?
(We now return you to our regular PG rated forum, thank you)
------------------
"It's not the years honey, it's the mileage".
Indiana Jones.
Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 09-14-2000, 12:13 AM:
One morning I drove past the now-gone single screen Cinema 2 in Davis which was showing "Disclosure", which someone had re-arranged the letters on the marquee to spell "DISCO RULES"! Someone also changed "BRAVEHEART" to "BEAVER HART" at that same theater.
I made a point of running the "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" previews back-to-back as much as possible, but that's just because I love cheesy disaster movies. I've tried to put 2 trailers together that both use either the same song or music score, almost got to do it with "Frequency" and some other trailer that had the "Hoffa" score on it- they use that one a LOT!
Posted by Gracia L. Babbidge (Member # 582) on 09-14-2000, 12:57 AM:
I've seen some interesting marquee re-arrangements...and in some of these cases, I can't remember what else was up on the marquee, just that there were enough titles for someone to get creative...Simon Birch --> Simon Bitch
Saving Private Ryan --> Shaving Ryans Privates
The Thirteenth Floor --> The Thirteenth Fool
(the 'r' removed from 'Floor' got used again on the marquee...)
Election --> Erection
...I can't think of any others off the top of my head, and I KNOW I've seen some good ones... :::racking her brain:::
oh well. If I think of any, I'll post. 
~Gracia
------------------
In some cultures, what I do is considered normal.
Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 09-14-2000, 01:05 AM:
I did that once put two trailers back to back with the same music I cant remember what they were but it was a 70's folk/rock song. it was really cool because it blended nicely
Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 09-14-2000, 01:38 AM:
Gracia Said:
>>Saving Private Ryan --> Shaving Ryans Privates<<Some enterprising marquee artists somehow got up to the big marquee for Pacific's Cinema Corte Madera and fixed the 'Private Ryan' billing to read thus:
PET A VAGINA
it remained that way for several days until someone finally got around to fixing it...
Aaron
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-14-2000, 03:04 AM:
Marquee arrangements eh? Back when "Leave it to Beaver" was playing and the marquee didn't have extra lines on it, this feature was always the marquee guy's favorite to "double up" on one line.
My Best Friend's Wedding coupled with LITB became "My Best Friend's Beaver"
Contact coupled with LITB became "Beaver Contact"
Air Force One coupled with LITB became "Beaver Force"
There were more, but since the title could be abbreviated so easily (plus we were short on "e" and had only 2 "v" letters) that the marquee guys always doubled up that movie with something else until we had to specify that title had to remain on it's own line.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 09-14-2000, 07:44 AM:
One that I remember was when a theatre was going to get "Scent of a Woman" they wanted to put up on the marquee to announce it, Scent of a Woman Comming Soon, rumor was it was Scent of a Woman Cumming Soon at first, never heard this confirmed or denied.
Posted by Dave Cutler (Member # 515) on 09-14-2000, 08:28 AM:
If anyone has seen the AMC feature presentation snipe "Celebrating 100 years of AFI" it has the same score as the ver 'b' trailer of "Anna and the King." As if it wasn't enough that people booed the feature presentation snipe (it's around 60 secs long 
), people started getting really annoyed if the Anna trailer was right before the AFI snipe.
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 08-05-2001, 05:02 PM:
Found this at random and am bringing it back up to put it back on topic.Regal Cinemas is notorious for placing inappropriate trailers on arthouse movies.
Cradle Will Rock opened in the New York suburbs on Xmas Day 1999. I saw the movie that day -- its opening day -- at the Regal in North Brunswick NJ. The accompanying trailers were Pitch Black, Supernova and Play It to the Bone. None of them were appropriate for an "Oscar Bait" picture!
All About My Mother won the 1999 Academy Award for foreign-language feature. I saw the movie at the Regal in East Windsor NJ on the Saturday after the Oscars. Among the trailers were Rules of Engagement and 28 Days -- both played at ear-shattering volume and not appropriate for an Oscar winner.