I don't envy the people who work in movie marketing. Even if you love your job, there must be times where you're pushing a film that you know is terrible, but you have to write ad copy for it anyway. On the other hand, maybe they don't let the marketing people actually see the movies, to prevent them from having to grapple with with such moral dilemmas. If you haven't seen it, you can advertise it with a clean conscience. Actually, that would explain why so many films have trailers that bear no resemblance to what the movies are actually about: the advertising guys haven't seen them.

Hmm. Maybe I'm on to something here.

Anyway, my point is, some movies are hard to promote. Sure, you have the occasional film that's a slam dunk, where the advertising strategy is obvious. Take Transformers, for example. The movie had a.) giant robots from b.) space that turned into c.) cars. If the Autobots had had d.) breasts, it would have been the perfect film for the average American male ages 15-30. All Paramount had to do was show images of giant robots from space turning into cars and blowing things up and the movie sold itself.

But then you have movies like Persepolis and The Kite Runner. Both are based on bestselling books (the former a graphic novel); both are predominantly in a foreign language; and both are about children growing up in the Middle East during times of struggle and ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.

See?! How are you supposed to market something like that? And did I mention that The Kite Runner has a scene where a 12-year-old boy gets raped? Or that Persepolis is a cartoon?

Persepolis has the advantage of having won awards at several film festivals, which Sony Pictures Classics will surely play up in the advertising. But then again, that will only be a selling point for the art house crowd. There's no way you can get regular people to see a mostly black-and-white cartoon about a girl growing up in Iran in the late '70s and early '80s, no matter how good it is.

And then there's The Kite Runner. It's rated PG-13, so you know there's nothing terribly graphic in it. But there is that scene, and other plot elements that refer to harm done to children. Generally speaking, we do not like to see young people hurt. They need to be at least 17 or so before we enjoy watching them get maimed and murdered.

The film is mostly in Dari, a version of Persian spoken in Afghanistan. See, I've lost you again, haven't I? I had to look that up. A review said it was in Dari, and I was like, "What the hell is Dari?," and then I went to Wikipedia. I think most of us don't like to watch movies that require looking things up on Wikipedia.

I've seen both of these films, though, and they're both good, so I want to try to help out with the advertising. Here are some slogans they can use, free of charge:

Persepolis: Based on a graphic novel, just like Sin City!

The Kite Runner: Several scenes are in English!

Persepolis: She moves to France halfway through, so you totally forget about the Iran thing!

The Kite Runner: The rape scene isn't too graphic!

* * * * *
Eric D. Snider's website is a tough sell, too, though it is mostly in English.

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