The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

You may recognize the name Morgan Spurlock from the supersize me documentaries he starred in and produced. My Law and Leadership class watched POM Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. This documentary follows Spurlock and his idea to create a movie about product placement and advertising. The intentionally ironic aspect of this is that he is funding the movie with product placement and advertising. I don’t know why, but I found this both hilarious and genius.

Spurlock raises many good points throughout the film and in some ways gets in over his head. He goes to multiple brands with the intention of selling out every category and does so pretty quickly. Brands like Mini Cooper, Sheetz, and POM all agree to decide to fund the movie. He talks to many Hollywood producers and directors about product placements on TV. The topic of credibility come up quite a bit. This ethical dilemma is examined by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Quentin Tarantino and J.J. Abrams.

As Spurlock was finding an answer to that question, I began to wonder and form my own opinion on the topic. I started to think about some examples of product placement that I’ve seen on TV shows. Currently, I’m watching Bones. In one episode, the main characters were solving a case half the time and the other half was dedicated to three of the main characters taking shifts to wait in line for the movie Avatar. The characters involved in that product placement were praising the movie. Fox’s movie studio decided to advertise the movie within one of its TV shows. I was ten when Avatar came out and remember the excitement and buildup surrounding the movie. The graphics were amazing for the time audit had a cult following before it even premiered. I remember one interviewee said that certain shows can get away with it, especially if the dialogue was integrated properly, while other shows cannot. HE continued to say that writers for tv shows and movies want to make the characters realistic, and product placement can break that reality. In Bones’ case, the movie integrated well with the plot of the show and the personality of the characters, but I was still a bit peeved when I watched the episode thirteen years after its premiere date.

Some people think product placement is a sellout and shows and movies lose credibility when incorporating it. Personally, product placement may change how I view the show a little bit, but I wouldn’t stop watching it. On the other hand, witnessing the hoops Spurlock had to jump through during the movie opened my eyes to

branding as a whole. All brands are protective of how they are perceived. This is not a new idea, but witnessing Spurlock’s experiences with the brands really showed how protective brands can get. Spurlock's movie unravels how complicated getting involved with brands can get. While the brands may have good reasoning for this, I think it’s important for the average person to see the behind the scenes of this process so they could broaden their prospective and form their own opinion.