A group of us, aged 33-44, all enjoyed The Girl Next Door, which was last week’s best-selling DVD nationwide. This was one of my cousin Harry’s smaller ideas, nurtured over the years and eventually spun off to a group of younger folks while Harry himself went to Omaha to make About Schmidt. Harry likes quiet, subtle movies like Breaking In, which he did with Burt Reynolds at the end of the 1980s. Hollywood, however, and the public to a large extent likes to pour youth and excess into even the quietest ideas. It is the director who has the final say over what goes into the script and what goes into the film. The young director of the Girl Next Door, Luke Greenfield, seems to have larded a lot of freight onto Harry’s small cart. Some of it is loud, some of it is confusing (esp. when it touches on the bank), much is unrealistic, and none is really necessary. Still we couldn’t understand how this movie was abandoned so quickly in the theaters. I don’t remember even seeing an ad for the movie anywhere. It seems like the sort of movie that could have been very successful with a young audience.
Anyone see this in the theater? If so, what was the crowd reaction? My friends were laughing out loud in the living room.
[Personally some of the stuff in the movie that struck me as odd: (1) the school photographer was using a Hasselblad rather than a long-roll camera to do senior portraits [opening credits], (2) all the high school boys had their own VCRs and TVs in their rooms and were watching porn movies [maybe kids really do this these days], (3) substantial usage of VHS tape, both for watching porn and as a master tape of the final production even though the kids were clearly shooting using mini-DV.]
How many movies like “The Girl Next Door” does your crowd see in a year? It’s the sort of “plot” that shows up 5-10 times a year on the big screen and countless times on TV and straight-to-video. Have a group showing once a month for a year and let us know how it holds up…
I thought all the cool kids were using Digital Betacam now.
I know it’s hard Philip, but try not too look at all the inconsistencies when it comes to tech in movies. Every movie is full of them, the greatest contradiction in tech terms ever in a movie probably being Mission Impossible’s “stand-alone mainframe” that could only by accessed from with the vault it was in. (That movie sucks on so many different levels, but this was probably the most memorable thing to a geek)
As for what kids do these days, more acurately would probably watching porn on their PCs dowloaded using BitTorrent. I’d also not be too surprised how man DV owers copy their digital masterpieces to VHS to be viewed by friends and family, most being too dumb to figure out how to edit it on their PCs and burn to DVD. (and write back to DV for archiving, of course)
I’m in Seattle, and I saw plenty of ads (and the movie) when it was originally released. Maybe you were on a trip or something? 🙂
Such things _are_ regional, though, and the demographics will play a huge part in it – do you pay attention to the types of media shows that this thing would’ve been advertised with?
Regarding the youth market: see, “The Myth of ’18 to 34′ “, from the New York Times Magazine.
On another subject (one raised by Bas Scheffers): OK, I’ll bite. What’s so stupid about a mainframe in a vault?
Hmmm, that “18 to 34” link doesn’t seem to work. Let’s try it a different way:
http://tinyurl.com/5wnog
Alex, have you seen the movie? (if not, I suggest you don’t) A “Stand-alone” mainframe. No terminals connected to it other than the console. A single user at a time using it. Kind of goes against the point of having a mainframe, doesn’t it?
I rented this over the weekend, and I was not impressed. As noted earlier, it’s thoroughly unoriginal. It’s also very crude and sleazy–ironically, the exception is the female lead, who isn’t nearly crude and sleazy enough to be believable as a porn star. She’s about as believable as Keanu Reeves was as a geek in “The Matrix.”
The relationship between the two main characters was really thin, even by Hollywood standards. The director might as well have put a placard on the screen saying, “the plot calls for these characters to be in love, so as of now they are.”
Finally, a pet peeve of mine. The movie is apparently supposed to be set in the LA area, but the cast is way too white. News flash: most of the population of Los Angeles is not white. It would be really nice to see a Hollywood movie set here that actually looked like it was set here, and not in Iowa.
Ken: I’m not sure that it was supposed to be set in LA. I thought that the porn girl moved back to some Midwestern small town to get away from all that. Evidence for this is an Interstate sign (43 or 47, I think) from the Midwest. On the other hand there is one night when the kids drive to Vegas and back, lending support to the “somewhere in California” theory.
I think it just wasn’t marketed in any of the media you read. It was actually a cover story on the local (to Boston) alt-weekly newspaper the Weekly Dig.
I also got handed a flyer for it one night on Newbury Street.
1) for senior portraits, a MF camera is normal (for general yearbook, long-roll or digital is standard now)
2) yes, most kids have tv/vcr’s in their rooms now (started out for their playstations)
3) most places (didn’t see the movie, guessing here) like schools, etc, are far more likely to have VHS than dvd players, etc. final dub goes onto vhs for max compatibility. As for porn, lots of video stores still rent vhs porn and plenty of vhs porn is still sold (many porn collectors have substantial investments in their vhs collections)
The movie was mildly entertaining. I quite enjoyed the DVD extras – I found the auteur acts by the director and scriptwriters to be just laughable, considering this is nothing more than the 25,000th remake of Risky Business. But I am a big fan of Timothy Olyphant (the porn director Kelly) – from watching HBO’s Deadwood. He was great.
The general sentiment?
“Rotten.”
Though, in fairness, I am sure that a good number of people who actually went to see it probably enjoyed it, mostly because they knew what type of film it was.
Sadly, there wasn’t much to draw people into the theatre in the first place.
I haven’t seen it yet, but does the “girl with a past” take her clothes off, like they’re supposed to? Any action in this movie?
Maybe that would have increased ticket sales?
I’m going to the $1 video store and find out for myself I guess… Here’s to hoping, ’cause she’s kinda cute if I remember correctly!
Ok, I went to the video store and rented it. It was, as mentioned before, pretty plot free. Other than that, your cousin did a fair job. It was cute, and it did show some skin, even some suggestive scenes, but nothing to get excited about. I don’t usually watch things like this, but I guess it beats that crud on network television. Not that it would take much.
My opinion…. it was worth a buck, but not the time it takes to sit through it.
Certainly nothing like Peaches!! http://www.stankygroove.com/albums/teaches.html
i’m in portland, or and didn’t see much, if any, push for the movie. we have theater pubs here and this seems like a movie that needs a few beers to get through from the 34, single, girl-with-a-past point of view. most guys are titillated by such a past, but really have issues with seeing such girls as long-term, marrying material. it’s not an easy issue. (must admit i haven’t seen the movie myself)