The film marketer learns the secret science behind box office fever. 1,780 words. Part One. Illustration by John Donald Carlucci.

The rumpled old man looked peeved, as if awakened from a particularly pleasant dream. Dr. Burton Hollister cleared his throat ink front of his colleague Double Helix president Linda Balsamo and their hoped-for client Excelsior Studios SVP of Marketing Sy Mishkin, and went into what was clearly a rehearsed pitch.

“Double Helix has discovered a way to link memes and microbes. We can literally infect people with ideas without their knowing it, making them think their actions are completely self-motivated.”

Linda beamed with approval. “You understand what that means, Sy?”

Mishkin was beginning to think not only had he wasted his morning, but perhaps he ought to pack up his belongings and freshen up his résumé. But, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I’m afraid not, Linda.”

What she did next surprised him. She pulled out her cell phone and glanced at the screen. “It’s been ten minutes since we’ve come into the office. Tell me, Sy, how do you feel about Excelsior Studios going into business with Double Helix now?”

That’s it. He’d wasted enough time on this. “I think it’s a complete waste…” the studio’s SVP of Marketing paused as he considered how he really felt. Then he completed the sentence. “…of time talking any further about it. Of course we want to do business with you.”

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The about-to-be-fired movie marketer needs a Hail Mary but finds Typhoid Mary. 1,503 words. Part Two. Illustration by John Donald Carlucci.

Sy Mishkin threw down The Hollywood Reporter in disgust. His name had appeared nowhere in the stories in the trades about how Excelsior Studios had just released the bomb of the year. Costing $150 million to produce, Teen Pirate had everything going for it: a hot young star, a script based on a best-selling television series, and cross-genre appeal as the modern-day pirate faces both zombies and vampires. The reviews on RottenTomatoes.com had been terrible — only 18% Fresh compared with 82% Rotten — but who cared? This was a project that should have been critic-proof. Instead, as the old Hollywood joke put it, audiences stayed away in droves.

Mishkan, at 45, was the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Excelsior and he had been through the mill many times. When a film was a success, it was because of the vision of the director or because the star could open a movie at number one at the box office. When it failed, the talent might take some of the blame, but usually they’d live to fight – or, at least, have stunt doubles or CGI special effects do it – another day. To keep the stockholders satisfied that the drop in price was only temporary, one or more of the suits would have to pay.

Often it was the head of the studio, who would fall on his or her sword for having greenlit a project that turned out to be a turkey. However the new CEO of Excelsior had just assumed his job and Teen Pirate had been the “passion project” of his predecessor. Since that guy already vacated his office, with his name removed from every piece of tangible property at the studio including his parking space, there was nothing more anybody could do to punish him. Indeed, his $20 million golden parachute had already cleared his bank account.

So Mishkin feared the blame would fall on himself for failing to come up with a brilliant marketing campaign that should have made Teen Pirate the must-see movie of the year or, at the very least, last weekend. The way Mishkin saw it, he had only two options. He could start clearing out his office and letting people know that the debacle was due to the underlings he had inherited. Or he could come up with such a brilliant campaign for the the next release so he would be deemed the hero who had pulled the studio back from the brink.

Sitting in his third office in ten years, he decided he liked going to a job where he no longer had to program his GPS to find a route to work. He was going to stay.

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