"America's Heart and Soul," in terms of $$$, is a "patriotic flop" for Disney: Why?

One is a film that celebrates the wholesome things in American life: men on horseback, women weaving tapestries, oil well firefighters in Texas. The other is a film that highlights the strength and resilience of the American people even when its government is conspiring against it: mothers of teenage war veterans, hopeless youths stuck in middle America, trusting border guards patrolling remote frontiers for no apparent reason.

One is the sort of film that Disney would like to be involved with. The other is the sort of film that Disney would go to great lengths not to be involved with.

America's Heart and Soul, a patchwork of moving and heartwarming vignettes of regular American eccentrics, was released in the US by Disney on July 2, just one week after Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 had been put out by an independent group set up by the Disney employee and Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein.

Disney had famously passed up the opportunity to release Moore's film, even though the studio had helped to finance it. The ensuing ruckus...is now part of movie lore: the documentary took the Palme d'Or and, despite a restrictive rating in the US, is very close to being the first documentary to break $100m at US box offices. Its success in the US has been mirrored around the world.

Without Moore's film, Disney turned to America's Heart and Soul, a pure, unblemished antidote to the dark cynicism that it felt certain inhabited Fahrenheit 9/11. Surely audiences, sickened by the paranoid ramblings of the fat man in the cap, would flock to a life-affirming portrait of the characters that make America great.

Inspired by the success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, a strategy was set to bring the film to the heartlands. More than 500 screenings were arranged for community groups, political groups, religious groups, cookie-baking groups - any gathering that might feel some affinity with the film. The International Federation of Bike Messengers, based in San Francisco, was given a special screening. (Its interest was guaranteed by a segment of the film that follows a New York cycle courier as he careers through the city's streets.) The American Association of People with Disabilities in Washington DC got another, its interest guaranteed by the story of a blind mountain climber. The Sierra Club, the biggest environmental pressure group in the US, got a screening, its interest guaranteed by the breathtaking landscapes and idolising of mother nature in the film.

But it wasn't just screenings. Emails were sent, websites primed. All bases were covered as Disney deployed its marketing know-how, not just its money, to persuade enough people to see a film that echoed the sentiments on which the company had built its reputation.

Even the story behind the film-making had the sort of lone-man-against-the-odds ethic that was sure to inspire audiences. Louis Schwartzberg, a first-time director and renowned cinematographer, had spent years making the film. What started off as outtakes from the commercials he was shooting grew into a series of brief portraits, which he decided to make into a feature-length film. In true Hollywood style, he saw it rejected by the major studios, only for Disney to offer to release it. Disney put $1m into the film, including spending $400,000 on print advertising. For its outlay, according to John Horn of the LA Times, the studio would be gratified if the film took $10m.

Which is where things came unstuck. Almost four weeks after its July 2 release on 98 screens, America's Heart and Soul has taken $311,572. This week it was showing on just 13 screens in the entire US mainland. Someone, somewhere, misjudged the mood.

Nobody at Disney was willing to comment for this article, preferring to let the fate of America's Heart and Soul slip quietly into the night...



Your thoughts on why this film is failing...will it do better as a rental or cable or home purchase? Does it have to do with the number of initial screens, and the lack of "buzz" from a Springer-equse, combat-focused, death/dumb-it-down media, or is is that the Reagan-esque "Morning In America" sensibility is being obliterated by the hard realities of working folks all over, who aren't looking for any wind-driven solar-rectal photosynthesis from their media content right now?

 

An aside: that is, by default, the best avatar ever. I played that, in its entirety, for each of my kids on their seventh day of life...just me and each ofthem, alone, with A Love Supreme. It is any wonder my four-year old speaks French and reads and writes?? My wife thinks its things like her working with them everyday; of course it was the Coltrane...!

Give them Coltrane, and they will grow like weeds, in every way that's wonderful and beautiful and positive.

 

Re: "America's Heart and Soul," in terms of $$$, is a "patriotic flop" for Disney: Wh

I think this lies at the heart of the issue; in a 21st century war, do we want some romanticized notion of our lives at home? Funny thing is, we enjoyed pictures of soliders and sunsets throughout the invasions of two sovreign nations, so why not more of that stuff at home?

What, if anything, has changed? That you'd have to go pay for it? that would play into the "It'll do better on HBO or CBS" argument...

 

I don't know about that. Maybe it got alot of pub...just mostly bad.

 

So are you arguing that noone would have seen the "wholesome thing" that was Gibson's Passion take without the intimate violence, regardless of the political climate?

 

Note the quotes. People who were committed to that film thought that they were engaging in the most wholesome of activities. The very grassroots screening process that Disney tried to roll out for the film of this thread was employed to great success...

 

I should have known...my bad.