I found an article on the New Yorker site about what goes in to marketing movies. Most of this stuff I already knew, but I love the psychology involved – identifying the “problems” of a movie and sometimes just outright distracting audiences from what the film is actually about. Remember the ad campaign for Stepmom? I remember that one only because I was so surprised to find out later it was about Susan Sarandon dying of cancer. It looked like some sort of catty sass-fest, judging from how it was sold.

I could never do it – mainly because it doesn’t make sense to me. I love and hate movies in all four quadrants. But it’s interesting to think about in terms of how the business side looks at the creative side.

Anyway, here’s a clip of the article:

The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.

Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.

Older men like darker films, classic genres such as Westerns and war movies, men protecting their homes, and men behaving like idiots. Older men are easy to please, particularly if a film stars Clint Eastwood and is about guys just like them, but they’re hard to motivate. “Guys only get off their couches twice a year, to go to ‘Wild Hogs’ or ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ ” the marketing consultant Terry Press says. “If all you have is older males, it’s time to take a pill.”