Product Placement

Product placement has been around in movies since the silent era, or so Wikipedia tells me. The earliest movie in which I can recall seeing product placement is 1967's "Point Blank." Lee Marvin turns on a television and watches a commercial. (I believe it's for panty hose.) Not very subtle.

More recently, product placement has become both more profuse and more tolerable. In fact, I think it can actually add realism to a film. Who cares if a character is drinking a Heineken? In real life, people drink Heineken.

Lately, filmmakers have been finding new ways to stick products in their films. "Talladega Nights" uses product placement to make fun of product placement, as when Will Ferrell mentions his sponsor, Powerade, while saying Sunday grace.

A couple of recent films use product placement to help define their characters. In "The Other Guys," Ferrell's character is a pansy in part because he drives a Prius. Similarly, Steve Carrell's character in "Crazy, Stupid, Love." is a dork in part because he wears 504 New Balances and buys jeans at The Gap.

These money-raising efforts seem reasonable. However, the Farrelly brothers' most recent film, "Hall Pass," goes even farther to plug products. When Owen Wilson's character wants a steak, he asks, "What better place to do it than right here?"--at Applebee's, where he's gone to pick up women. Later in the film, Jason Sudeikis tells Wilson, "Your wife wanted to cook, so you bought her a Viking." Dejected, Wilson sighs, "I got her a GE." It's a moment that's supposed to demonstrate how he's let his wife down. But it could easily be a radio ad from the '40s. And when Sudeikis and Wilson get high, Sudeikis complements Wilson on his smooth skin, which Wilson credits to his Dove soap.

These exchanges are more than product placement. I would call them product endorsement. They're grating because people don't actually talk about how great a brand is. These plugs take us out of the film and force us to watch a brief ad for a product using the same characters with whom we're supposed to be identifying in the story.

Still, product placement--or even endorsement--isn't going away any time soon, especially in one particular genre. All of the more recent films I mentioned were comedies. American comedies are now struggling to get financing because they don't translate well abroad. Overseas grosses are becoming ever more lucrative and important for a film. This trend favors blockbusters--Michael Bay speaks the universal language of boobs and bombs--over films that rely more on culture-specific wit and subtlety.

So, do the ends justify the means? Is a good film worth making if it has to be paid for by egregious product placement? So far, I would have to say yes. I love "Point Blank." If the advertisement was necessary to finance it, then so be it. Still, I'm bracing myself for the day when we see a film with a close-up of Shia LeBouf drinking a Budweiser in slow motion with pretty girls on both arms.