5:45AM Defamer Hollywood | With
Lars and the Real Girl set to open in various markets over the next few weeks – it’s the buzzed-about Ryan Gosling film about a lonely misfit deluded into thinking he’s
fallen in love with a mail-order silicone sex doll – producers are facing a marketing challenge: Sure, the concept alone might sell tickets to a built-in, RealDoll-enthusiast audience, who’ll arrive opening night with high hopes of
cheerleading costumes and raunchy, multi-doll orgies. But how to get the rest of America to warm to what is in actuality a mild and sweet-natured film about small town, churchgoing folk? One solution, employed by Hollywood in the past to
varying degrees of
success, is to target one’s sex-doll movie directly to the Christians who’d most identify with its
message of universal tolerance:
How do you market a wholesome, old-fashioned film about a churchgoer who falls in love with his sex doll? Grassroots screenings with religious groups, maybe?
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