Brokeback Mountain - taste is formed by the consumer...

          Taste in films can be created by the distribution tactics to certain market segments. At the distribution level, the product touches the audience and allows them to change the preconceived notion of what that film will be. Producers of films work diligently to determine the correct target audience in order to generate the most money. As I will note in the following paper, film taste is formed by the consumer because they help determine acceptance; taste is independent from what distributors like 20^th Century Fox, or Warner Brother’s place on their products. To explain this I will focus on the film Brokeback Mountain and how producers and Focus Feature’s decision regarding their imagined audience was incorrect due to how the consumer’s taste shaped the success of the film.

            Market segments help shape what is produced for the consumer as well as the expectations of the film; they also label segments of the population and place them into categories relating to cultural products. Looking at the theatrical run of Brokeback Mountain we note this film as a sleeper, because it arrived in theatres almost without knowledge and turned out doing tremendous business. This boost in business was due to the audience.

In the beginning, assumptions for Brokeback Mountain’s success was mediocre, Bob Mondello mentions in his New York Times article, Selling ‘Brokeback’: A Tough Mountain to Climb, that the film was “expected by many in Hollywood to create a few media ripples, do ‘modest’ business, and then sink like a stone….simply returning the money it cost to make – about $14 million – would be an accomplishment.”            Producers of the film seemed to be using a tactic of reverse psychology to market the film, but it is unlikely that they would give into the genius of that method at the time of release. Originally screening on just five screens in three cities with large gay populations, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, producers set out to show this film to an audience they believed would be the only accepting receivers, as Mondello writes, “it was, in almost every way, a cautious, low-profile, carefully protected opening.”

Focus Features seemed to be limiting the viewing of this film in a way that made consumers curious. Due to the hesitancy to release this film into a broad market, distributors envisioned that a gay audience would be more likely to consume a western romance story about to males.

            The assumption that only a gay audience would see the film created a stir of curiosity. Releasing this film into a niche market of consumers created a sense of demand for those who could not see it. Producers were wrong about their audience. While reviews from the gay community were favorable, what was more interesting was that other markets were equally interested in this film. Although Brokeback Mountain might not have been produced for baby boomers, newlyweds, teenagers, etc., the uniqueness and exclusivity of this film generated the demand to expand distribution to a larger market. Prior to Christmas, Focus Features decided to run with audience demand and open the film wider, this created grosses of “more than $109,000 per theater – the highest per-screen average ever recorded for a non-animated picture.” Due to the snowball effect and curiosity of this film the picture was more widely released and due to the anticipation was met with an accepting audience.

            As we can see above, taste is formed due to the market segments which are comprised of consumers who share common traits as determined by market research firms. Without the actions of the producers to limit this film to an audience they believed would be the only accepting consumer, we see that Brokeback Mountain is not strictly enjoyed inside the gay community. Due to the cautious opening, I would consider that Focus Features knew the possibilities of opening a gay cowboy romance story, otherwise they would not have taken the picture to begin with, or it would have gone straight to DVD. The acceptance of Brokeback Mountain into the larger market is what determined this film’s taste, “reviews ranged from favorable to ecstatic in almost every market, and anecdotal evidence suggested that after an initial burst of gay attendance in each new location, the audience essentially conformed to the largely female demographic of any other romantic drama.” It is through other means rather than those professed by the producers and distributors of Brokeback Mountain, that a wider audience enjoyed this film and accepted it into their culture as a type of film ready for consumption.

 

Works Cited

Bob Mondello. 2006. “Selling ‘Brokeback’: A Tough Mountain to Climb” NPR.org, (Feb 2)