Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!
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“Refreshes the parts [of the screen] other beers cannot reach”
Product placement often feels kind of lazy to me. I get that Heineken just wants their brand associated with Bond and for it to appear in the film as often as possible, but isn’t there a difference between doing that and actually convincing people to buy and use your product? I mean, take the second and third shots above. That’s from the point in the movie where Bond is at his lowest. He’s a wreck, and he’s drinking Heineken. Not very convincing as advertising. Now, I don’t think anyone is going to watch those scenes and suddenly decide NOT to drink Heineken because they want to avoid a similar situation, but it’s quite a long way from Connery driving an Aston-Martin and looking cool while doing it. It’s that kind of aspirational use of a product that’s missing in Skyfall and most modern product placement, which is why it just seems like a waste of money on Heineken’s part.
Yeah, but look at that body he has and see the chick he’s scoring with. Also, he’s … staring down … scorpions. James Bond rules! Gimme a Heineken!!
How funny – brings together the bits of a great panel cartoon I saw back in the late 80s: “Dennis Hopper as James Bond – ‘Heineken! Fuck that shit! Martini! Shaken! Not! Stirred!!”
The Heineken in this has got nothing on the out-of-control Sony product placement in Casino Royale. In that movie, Bond watches Sony DVD-Roms on his Sony Blu-ray player while using his Sony Vaio laptop, making a call on his Sony Ericsson cell phone, and taking photos with a Sony digital camera. And I’m not exaggerating any of that.
The product placement I can never forgive is the Bulgari watch in MINORITY REPORT. Every time Cruise looks at it, I think “At what point in the future does Bulgari get out of the luxury goods market and start manufacturing police-issue equipment? And why?” And then that story starts seeming way more interesting than the one I’m watching.
Besides the Cheerios box in Superman the first movie I can remember where the audience audibly commented on the blatant and profuse placements was Moonraker.
Denzel spends about 80% of FLIGHT lugging around a damp 12-pack of THE KING OF BEERS, and you best believe I went out and bought a 12-er of Budweiser like 15 minutes after it was over and got lit the fuck up. There’s no such thing as making drinking look bad.
Didn’t Truffaut say that NO MOVIE COULD BE ANTI-WAR because it always looks so fucking awesome on film? Similarly, any allegedly ANTI-DRINKING MOVIE only ever serves to make me prouder to be a drunk. Shit, they gave WAINGRO a Bud longneck in HEAT and I still think of that every time I buy it in six-pack bottle form.
I’m also reminded of CAST AWAY, which should have been subtitled “Brought to you by FedEx,” despite the fact that the whole plot hinges on the crash of a FedEx plane due to improperly handled hazardous material.
Some people are more susceptible to a movie’s marketing than others. It’s not necessarily about ‘selling’ to a market that wouldn’t be buying otherwise, it’s getting people like Lex to just buy more.
Okay, I always thought it was Sam Fuller who said that thing about war movies… and then I always immediately flash to Lee Marvin’s “Poussez, poussez” scene in THE BIG RED ONE.
If it wasn’t Fuller, and Lex is right about Truffaut, I’d like to be straightened out on this. This should be the right place for that.
Oh, and apropos the theme of the thread:
The Heineken placement in SKYFALL cannot possibly be MORE obnoxious than the goddamned TV spots with Daniel Craig, or that whole campaign in general.
@Lex: “Similarly, any allegedly ANTI-DRINKING MOVIE only ever serves to make me prouder to be a drunk.”
Not (per se) an anti-drinking movie, but my ante-ante-ante-antepenultimate relapse into the allures of Eristoff would have been delayed for at least a couple of days had I not seen Freddie Quell/Joaquin Phoenix in THE MASTER. When most people seem to go “how can he drink torpedo fuel!” or “ew! Lysol!”, I go “well… you know, I’d like to have a taste of that”.
I’ve never fired a handgun, but no Bond movie is going to convince me to ditch a Glock for an old Walther.
Not David, the quote is most frequently attributed to Truffaut, though I’ve never seen a direct quote, just paraphrases by others (such as Ebert).
There’s also the scene where Rory Kinnear (Tanner) drinks a Heineken, but you don’t actually see the logo. It’s when he and Q lure Silva to Scotland.
But seriously, this is nothing compared to Casino Royale or Moonraker. It’s never distracting. Imagine how much advertisment they could’ve thrown at the Shanghai Silhouette fight scene.
Speaking of Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!, where’s our Korine-fest review?
We pay you good money for this blog, Glenn, and we demand value.
Where’s the “Spring Breakers” review? That’s what we want!
This is peanuts compared to every Mac in every movie. You’d think that filmmakers could devise a new brand.