Even selling out isn’t as easy as it looks.
Morgan Spurlock discovered this the hard way when he cold-called some 600 companies to sponsor his film about product placement, Friday’s “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”
“I had people who would attack my character and my looks,” the mustachioed New Yorker tells The Post. “We thought Abercrombie & Fitch would be a great brand for the movie. They were like, ‘Have you looked in the mirror? You do not represent Abercrombie. You’re too pale and unattractive.’ It was that wrong.”
Lucky for him, other brands weren’t so judgmental, and he eventually signed enough benefactors to finance the film, which aims to pull back the curtain on how companies place their products in movies and TV shows.
Completely clogged with brands, the documentary follows Spurlock (most famous for “Super Size Me”) as he attempts to enlist corporate patrons. The movie you watch is him trying to pay for the movie you’re watching. Twenty sponsors financed the entire film, which cost $1.5 million.
In one scene, Spurlock is trying to schmooze the makers of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. They eventually fork over $1 million for above-the-title naming rights and to become Spurlock’s exclusive on-screen beverage.
The filmmaker got the idea after watching an episode of NBC’s “Heroes” in which one of the characters is blatantly presented driving a new Nissan. From there, Spurlock began thinking about other product placement-heavy entertainment, such as “Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” which featured a laughably obvious plug for Dodge, and “Iron Man,” which contained more brands than explosions.
“How much is too much?” he asks. “The film is not just about marketing in television, it’s about marketing in our daily lives. Do we need to live in a world where everything is brought to us by sponsors? The City Council just voted to consider selling the naming rights to parks and playgrounds. Am I going to take my kid to Mountain Dew Playground?”
“I think the best part is that we were able to maintain creative control of the movie, so we made a movie that was completely paid for by them, but made on our own terms,” he says.
Of course, we’d be remiss if we failed to point out that he said this as he took a swig of POM.