Monday Morning Quarterback

By BOP Staff

September 8, 2009

We think he would rather have starred in Ow! My Balls!

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Pete Kilmer: I agree with what Josh says. Butler will have a very solid career in a high profile, strong supporting roles with the occasional lead role in a lower budget flick - unless Marvel Studios signs him to some project.

Sean Collier: Esquire ran a cover story about him which seemed very convinced of his status as a leading man; then again, this month's Esquire has Sam Worthington on the cover. He's one of those guys who might be a leading man, depending on the way his career goes. I think it'll take a flukey blockbuster to do it - one of his mid-level projects breaking out, and in a more mainstream way than 300 did. He could also follow the Bana path. Too early to call it, I'd say.

Reagen Sulewski: I really don't know how many times we have to reject him before it sticks. I mean, he seems like a very nice guy, but everyone seems to be holding onto the idea that he was somehow a key to 300 working, when he couldn't have been more incidental.

Kim Hollis: I think most people would look at you with a glazed stare if you ask them who Gerard Butler is. He's not interesting and though he can be attractive, he just doesn't stay with you once you've seen a movie of his. He's forgettable.

David Mumpower: As I touched upon in the last topic, he's been rejected as a lead actor as much as anyone this side of Eric Bana. He seems like a nice enough fellow and a decent actor, but his name in the cast means nothing financially.




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Extract opens low, King of the Hill is coming to an end. Mike Judge should be a bigger deal.

Kim Hollis: Extract opened in ninth place with a disappointing $4.3 million. Is this going to be another Mike Judge film that becomes a hit on home video? Why do you think people don't go see his films in theaters, in spite of their quality?

Josh Spiegel: People don't know about them. Let's not forget how roundly dismissed Idiocracy was by the same company that reaped benefits from Office Space. Sure, Extract had the biggest push of any Mike Judge movie, but I feel like Miramax didn't know how to advertise the movie. When I saw Mila Kunis on Conan O'Brien this week, I was shocked to find out that her character was a con artist of some kind; the previews basically just show her and have other characters go nuts at how hot she is. I'm sure Extract will do fine on home video; the problem is that Judge's films don't translate as simply as do movies such as, for example, The Hangover. That's not a bad thing, but for the business end, it doesn't help much.

Pete Kilmer: No one really knows who "Mike Judge" is. Yeah the home video crowd does, but as a movie theater "brand" he's not that well known to the mass public. Damn shame too, as he really does have his finger on the pulse of a lot things that people can relate to.

Sean Collier: The humor in his films comes from longer set-ups and character traits; these things don't translate well to trailers and commercials. So you either make a trailer that describes what the film is about (and thus isn't funny,) or make a trailer that tries to piece together one-liners and gags (and thus doesn't describe the film.) It's a marketing problem he's sort of stuck with.

Kim Hollis: His stuff is just impossible to market, plain and simple. Judge is brilliant and funny and if you watch his stuff, even something that is sort of not good like Idiocracy, you're bound to find something worthy of making you laugh. I feel pretty sure this is going to be a DVD hit.

David Mumpower: I feel that the magic of Mike Judge comes from the repeat value of the jokes. The comedy maxim is that something is less funny the second time it's heard. This is not a universality, of course, and a lot of Judge's humor proves this. There is a reason so many of us can recite Office Space/Beavis & Butthead dialogue like scripture. It's still just as funny now as it was the first time we heard it. The problem is that most of his jokes are difficult to articulate in a television ad. "Oww My Balls" is a gag we quote a lot on the site staff page when we discuss Wipeout and other uber-violent reality game shows. Quantifying why it's hilarious is nearly impossible yet we see that reference thrown around quite a bit. His "problem" is that his comedy bits are oftentimes sublime, but they generally take a while to appreciate fully.


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