Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

One of the great challenges facing studio-marketing wizards is determining precisely where to draw the very fine line between too much and not enough publicity for an important project.

At a time when more than $27 million is spent to market the average studio movie - nearly $31 million, when you throw in the cost of prints - a film's ability to beat even the vaguest break-even point often is dependent on establishing a realistic ad budget. By comparison, it costs a third as much to market the films of Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, New Line, Miramax and other boutique companies.

If $27 million is what it takes to market the average release, imagine what's required for the kind of blitzkrieg campaigns behind, say, The Matrix Reloaded, Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle, T3 or this weekend's big question mark, Seabiscuit.

Between all the creative bookkeeping techniques, Byzantine exhibition deals and elaborate schemes, who really knows when a film is on the brink of turning a profit? Certainly not the Sunday night newsreaders, whose job it is to hyperventilate whenever a movie debuts at $50 million, but can't explain why the numbers are newsworthy.

Those numbers would be substantially higher if television talk shows didn't bend over backwards to provide millions of dollars worth of free advertising in return for the opportunity to showcase some hot, young star. The list of shows dedicated to entertainment, fashion and celebrities is growing exponentially, and each is desperate for content. Sadly, most are vapid enough to make ET look like 60 Minutes, which, itself, has begun treating celebrities like, well, celebrities.

Despite their seedy reputation, press junkets actually require studios to part with some money. While most of the out-of-town journalists - and I use that word advisedly -- can be bought for the price of a prawn, the tab for flying these blurb-mongers into town, shuttling them around, doling out their per-diems and setting them up at the Four Seasons can be staggering. The mini-bar bill, alone, can come in higher than the opening-weekend grosses of some high-risk movies.

Still, free or expensive, publicity can only take a picture so far.

Last month, a suddenly ubiquitous Arnold Schwarzenegger carried the water as far as he could for T3. Demi Moore's bizarre comeback tour was greeted with applause by talk-show bookers, but her wacky behavior probably did Sony more harm than good. Clearly, though, their presence did nothing to prevent a precipitous collapse at the box office on Day 8 of the release cycle.

Did anyone really think it would?

Seabiscuit is a horse of a different color. For Universal's $80 million equine biopic to be successful, its hooves will have to carry it longer than 10 days and attract customers old enough to bets at an OTB. In racetrack parlance, Seabiscuit - like the book on which it is based -- was bred for distance, not speed. We'll see.

In the same way that pre-Bruckheimer pirate epics - and pre-Crowe toga movies - couldn't automatically be expected to rise above their genre at the box office, most movies about horse racing have been treated as long shots, at best. The hugely unexpected popularity of Laura Hillenbrand's book -- along with the excellent track records of the actors and producers involved - has raised expectations at Universal.

Nevertheless, not being a typical summer release, it will be extremely interesting to see how Seabiscuit performs over the weekend, and what the spin-doctors and pundits have to say about it come Monday morning.

I'm loathe to set over/under lines for box-office numbers, other folks at MCN have a much better grasp on that particular unreality than I do. But, just for argument's sake, let's say the guesstimate is somewhere north of $25 million.

If Seabiscuit pulls $30 million or better, Uni's marketing team will be able to stand up and take a bow (or let their bosses do it for them). If it stumbles out of the gate instead, the first temptation probably will be to blame the fickle nature of contemporary audiences or the genre. All those whispers about Gary Ross' film being the first Oscar-worthy release of the year - ostensibly from wags who haven't seen Dirty Pretty Things, Whale Rider, American Splendor and Finding Nemo - will fade away as quickly and mysteriously as they began.

Maybe, though, the public simply got tired of being told how good this kind of medicine would be for them.

You should know that I found Seabiscuit to be a very entertaining movie. It's expertly produced, credible from a horse lover's point of view and well acted. The racing scenes, especially, are worth the price of admission.

That said, I expect some critics will be less than enthusiastic about the film's early pacing. It takes a while for Seabiscuit to be introduced and, by then, some in the audience may be wondering if they're sitting in the wrong auditorium.

Sportswriters familiar with Seabiscuit's background might criticize the decision to compress Hillenbrand's narrative, by fudging certain time elements and eliminating landmarks in the horse's real-life journey. Ignoring Seabiscuit's early successes in Detroit, for example, allowed screenwriters to beef up the drama that played out in Southern California, and freed their fictional radio announcer to crack jokes about Seabiscuit's record.

The author, we're told, approved these flights of fancy, but what choice did Hillenbrand really have?

After seeing the picture, the boys and girls in the press box at Hollywood Park were wondering how Ross could have missed the fact that Seabiscuit was shown, at least twice, being paraded around a statue of himself inside Santa Anita's walking ring. Perhaps the sculpture was left in the scene as an inside joke, or homage to the future champion, but it did raise a few eyebrows.

That's the kind of detail only someone way too close to the sport would notice and allow it to detract from their enjoyment of the movie. Overall, the reporters agreed that Seabiscuit could be good for racing, and that's all they really wanted to result from the movie.

From a purely technological point of view, the in-your-face re-construction of the races - which required inventing new cranes and camera platforms - was fantastic, as was the verisimilitude of life along the backstretch. The jockeys hired to ride alongside Maguire made sure the filmmakers didn't order them to do things that would make them look silly on horseback.

The question that will be answered in the days to come, though, involves the success or failure of a marketing campaign that, by Sunday night, was teetering on overkill. Have six months' worth of television ads, teasers, trailers and production clips revealed too much about the movie, or just enough to pique the public's interest? It can't be a good thing if potential moviegoers have already memorized all the plot twists.

To this end, it was essential for the Uni braintrust to convince us that Seabiscuit was more than a movie about horse racing or Depression-era chutzpah. They have to convey the notion that Jeff Bridges wasn't reprising his Tucker character ... that Chris Cooper wasn't doing an impression of Robert Redford, in The Horse Whisperer ... that Tobey Maguire wasn't channeling Mickey Rooney ... that Seabiscuit didn't poop out in the stretch of the 1940 Big 'Cap, like Funny Cide in this year's Belmont. We had to know, going in, that this was an exciting and heart-warming drama about a remarkable period in the nation's history, populated with underdogs who become heroes and ugly ducklings who turn into beautiful swans.

Oh, yeah, it has some pretty exciting racing scenes, too.

The ads seem to make that much clear, at least. But will that knowledge be enough to attract the kind of opening-weekend crowd that will embrace the story and spread the word to their friends and neighbors? If Seabiscuit proves to be the stretch runner it was bred to be, come December, will Oscar and Golden Globes voters remember the movie with fondness, and boost the value of the DVD by showering it with year-end honors?

Critics are the wild cards in this equation. Their unkind words didn't stop mainstream audiences from discovering My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or giving in to the temptation to sample this summer's bevy of sequels. Book readers tend to take criticism to heart, so a positive review could tip the scales in favor of a rare excursion to the noisy neighborhood multiplex.

Challenges as daunting as turning Seabiscuit into a blockbuster - it will have to gross between $150 million and $175 million to be considered moderately successful -- only come around once in a while. Generally, they involve monster-budget movies adapted from books that unexpectedly struck a chord with a broad cross-section of readers. As such, they tend to enter the marketplace with targets painted on their one-sheets.

Studio flacks must concern themselves with the overall success of the project, but personal publicists seem perfectly willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. All they care about is getting their clients booked on prime-time newsmagazines, Oprah and Today; Letterman, Leno, Stern and King; and on the covers of glossy periodicals, the Sunday L.A. Times Calendar section and the New York Times Magazine (yes, Virginia, even the august New York Times can be bought). The bulk of the Hollywood press corps must satisfy itself with the kind of bite-size morsels of information made available to them at roundtable interview sessions and three-minute sound-bite opportunities.

Think I'm exaggerating about the absurdity of the situation? Read this, from New York magazine's Intelligencer column:

"ABC News is stepping up its fight for celebrity scoops. The news division has teamed with 'Entertainment Tonight' to offer celebrities 'ET' coverage if they agree to do exclusive sit-downs on 'Good Morning, America,' '20/20' or 'Primetime.' The decision was made after watching NBC's relentless cross-promotion of 'Dateline's' hourlong interview with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, which was conducted by 'Access Hollywood' anchor Pat O'Brien. Ben and J. Lo segments were featured for several days before and after the premiere on 'Access' and 'Today.' 'Their message was simple,' an ABC insider tells us. 'If the NBC package appeals to your client, then understand that ABC News can also shoot one interview for GMA, 20/20, or Primetime and provide significant play on ET.' ABC, however, will not be using 'ET' correspondents for its news show. The brass thinks that NBC crossed the line with its Dateline/Access partnership because reporters like O'Brien don't have to uphold the same journalistic standards. 'Everyone feels safe with Access,' one publicist told us. 'What are they going to ask that's so bad?' Meanwhile, we hear Britney Spears's handlers are trying to land her a guest spot on an NBC sitcom in exchange for a 'Dateline' interview."

Still think whoring is too strong a description of what goes on before the launch of a major motion picture? Everyone in the news divisions of ABC and NBC will deny that the practice described in New York compromises their ability to report on the business of entertainment, but they'll be crossing every one of their fingers and toes.

Like I said, I found Seabiscuit to be an entertaining way to kill a few hours. It's the kind of inspirational picture that can be enjoyed by teenagers, as well as their grandparents ... many of whom will happily reminisce about what life was like as America emerged from the Depression.

To get the full story, though, viewers unfamiliar with Hillenbrand's book are advised to pick up a copy on their way back home from the theater. After breezing through the book, they should plan a visit to their local racetrack to experience the rituals and excitement of the sport for themselves.

The good news for reporters and publicists, I suppose, is that their long nightmare finally is coming to an end. Now, they can start bracing themselves for wall-to-wall coverage of Cold Mountain, The Last Samurai and, of course, the Untitled Nancy Meyers Project.

I, for one, can't wait.