The Greatest Movie Ever Sold - My First Movie at Hot Docs

I've attended my first movie of the 2011 Hot Docs season, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.  I've been anticipating this movie since Morgan Spurlock's talk at TED, and did a post about it a month ago.  This movie satirizing moden marketing practices, particularly product placement, was a hoot, and has earned 4 stars in my newly created rating scheme for this Hot Docs.

Morgan Spurlock, American documentary filmmaker best known for his movie Supersize Me, delighted the TED audience with his description of the making - and funding - of The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.  The movie is designed to expose the extent of product placement in movies and it was funded entirely through product placement!  What irony.

In this movie, there's nothing subtle about the product placements - they're blatant and obvious. There were some hilarious videos of Spurlock pitching his idea to ad agencies, explaining how their clients would benefit from placement in a movie that satirized product placement in movies!   He eventually circumvented the ad agencies and went directly to the clients.  In my own experience in the advertising world, you really need to go to the clients directly, if you want to sell a new idea.  Ad agencies are very conservative.  Amazingly, Spurlock was able to convince several companies to go for product placement in the movie.

In contrast, Spurlock went to the Internet to sell the naming rights to his TED talk!  THey sold to data storage firm EMC² for $7,100, in return for Spurlock mentioning the firm in his talk.

This movie is due to be released in April.