20130623

AGAINST ALL ODDS

The Phil Collins' song 'Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)' was the hottest song on the Billboard chart in the American spring of 1984. Initially called 'How Can You Sit There', the song was re-written for the movie, 'Against All Odds' starring Jeff Bridges. 'Against All Odds', a remake of the 1947 film 'Out of the Past' starring Jane Greer, was the 5th most popular picture at the box office in March 1984. Director Taylor Hackford confessed, "I grew up with that film on television...I felt the story was convoluted and didn't work too well but the movie was wonderful." He was also "impressed by the ambivalent characters, none of them black or white." 'Against All Odds' he described, "It's more of an adult movie...with thorny characters."
 
"The song ('Against All Odds')," Phil made known, "was written out of experience as opposed to a 'what if' song. If that personal stuff had not happened to me at the time, I probably would never have made an album, and if I was to have made an album eventually, it probably would have been a jazz/rock thing. Without that stuff I wouldn't have felt the stuff I felt sitting at a piano night after night, day after day writing stuff."
 
Jeff made the observation, "What the movies have taught me is how accessible love is. It's the most important emotion and it seems it's always in the movies, somewhere...When I played a real bad guy in 'Jagged Edge' with Glenn Close, I thought about what the price of evil is. I figured it was a lack of love. We try to get powerful and rich so we can buy love, but that can't be done." Michael Cimino, Jeff shared, "He taught me something interesting about the fear that you often feel as an actor, that you’re gonna fall short of what your character should be. He compared it to a game of tag where you're 'it' and nobody else is 'it' and whatever you do as the character is the real thing. It made sense to me. I still believe that."
 
Of marketing, Taylor made known, "Columbia has made 7 different commercials for 'Against All Odds', showing different aspects of the movie but with the same music and general theme. The main message is 'This is a tough – underline tough – romantic thriller'...Because I'm the producer as well as the director, I'm able to have some input on how the picture is marketed. That's very important, as I learned on my first picture 'The Idolmaker'. It never found an audience. The poster was black and dark and unappealing. And the record came out 3 weeks after the picture opened."
 
He contributed the success of 'An Officer and a Gentleman' to word of mouth, "They showed it to anyone who would look at it. Not only 'opinion makers' but to bartenders and hairdressers, because they talk to a lot of people." One distributor added, "For librarians, cab drivers, beauticians, women's clubs, disk jockeys, museum groups. For anyone who'd be likely to talk about it...If word of mouth hadn't been terrific, everything we did made up a very bad plan...We originally had the movie scheduled for October (1982). That's what history tells us to do. The process of changing our mind began last January, when we sneaked the movie in New Orleans and picked up the response of the audience. New Orleans is a mid-American, blue-collar market. A month later the same response was duplicated in Toronto, an upscale market of movie buffs. So in March (1982) we decided to take a shot at the summer (July 1982). We were sure that people who went to see 'An Officer and a Gentleman' would like the film. The challenge was to get people in to see it in the first place. If we could get a satisfactory level of attendance the first week, the film would carry on." A Paramount production staff revealed, "It's common to have a single-image advertisement. Like that airplane tied in a knot for 'Airplane'. You tell audiences only the one most important thing about your movie. Our double-image ad with the stars embracing and beneath them the trainees running was old-fashioned and our research said the ad was too soft. They said we had to have a harder edge and sell it as a military film. We liked the film a lot, and we went with our instincts."
 
Of the 2010 movie 'Tron: Legacy', Jeff made the comment, "(Technology) was one of the reasons that got me involved in 'Tron' in the first place, was to be a part of that cutting-edge technology...It's great news for me, because now it means I can play myself at any age...The hardest thing to do in visual effects is pull off a realistic human face. It was very exciting to be a part of that." Director Joseph Kosinski believed, "I think this technology opens up really interesting opportunities for actors."

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