TEXAS FILM AND MEDIA SERIES Thomas Schatz, Series Editor UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN Copyright © 2004 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2004 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. ∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Kernan, Lisa. Coming attractions : reading American movie trailers / Lisa Kernan.— 1st ed. p. cm. — (Texas film and media series) Filmography of trailers viewed: p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-292-70600-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-292-70558-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion picture trailers—United States. I. Title. II. Series. PN1995.9.T68K47 2004 791.43'75'0973—dc22 2004007809 IN MEMORIAM: George Custen Jeannine Ivy Nina Leibman Beverly Robinson Christine Saxton A few in my scholarly orbit whose legacies remind me to keep it real. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................. ix Chapter 1 Trailers: A Cinema of (Coming) Attractions ..............1 Chapter 2 Trailer Rhetoric ..................................................................... 36 Chapter 3 The Classical Era: The “Mythic Universal American”..............................78 Chapter 4 The Transitional Era: Chasing the Elusive Audience.......................................120 Chapter 5 The Contemporary Era: The Global Family Audience.........................................163 Chapter 6 Conclusion. The Cinema Is Dead: Long Live the Cinema of (Coming) Attractions... 207 Filmography of Trailers Viewed .................................. 219 Notes........................................................................................... 233 Selected Bibliography ....................................................... 271 Index.......................................................................................... 287 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Acknowledgments have been blessed with the generosity of many friends, colleagues, I teachers and institutions during the long process of bringing this book to press. The insight of Texas Film and Media Series editor Tom Schatz was much appreciated in the process of transforming a dis- sertation into a book, and my editor, Jim Burr, has intelligently and cheerfully made doing a book seem like a friendly, easygoing enterprise. Lynne Chapman, ace copyeditor Bob Fullilove, and two anonymous readers also helped make it a better book. I want to acknowledge Jeff Joseph of Sabucat Productions, whose love of trailers has borne fruit in the form of an unsurpassed private col- lection, which he was generous enough to share with me for the cre- ation of the illustrations as well as for my presentation at the Vienna conference “You Can Have It.” Our discussions over the years were help- ful in many ways, and Jeff ’s passion for seeing and sharing films and trailers is a gift that the Los Angeles area is lucky to have. Marilyn Frisbee of Sabucat cheerfully helped me not once but twice to obtain clips for illustrations. I also want to thank the Librarians Association of UCLA for two LAUC-LA minigrants that enabled me to provide Sabucat with at least a gesture of remuneration. I have been fortunate to be inspired and taught by generous mentors whose approaches to teaching and writing about film have reminded me of the potential for such work to be more than just a product of an academic career. The adage “When the student is ready, the teacher appears” certainly applies in my case to both Bill Nichols and Vivian Sobchack, whose works moreover offer examples of film writing that successfully aspires at once to be an art form and to raise consciousness. Besides Vivian, without whose encouragement and critique this book might not exist, the committee of Nick Browne, Meg Campbell, Douglas X COMING ATTRACTIONS Kellner and Bob Rosen provided support and guidance through the dis- sertation process, and Doug in particular continued to guide me as the book took shape. The UCLA Film, Television and Digital Media faculty have guided and influenced me in countless ways, as did San Francisco State University’s Cinema faculty during my MA. Thank you also to my first film teachers, David Pini and Jake Shearer. I am grateful to other colleagues who influenced the work and/or offered encouragement, especially Jane Gaines, Rhonda Hammer and Susan Ohmer. Noël Burch, Jill Casid, Sumiko Higashi, Arthur Knight, Katie Mills and Lutz Nitsche offered valuable feedback on portions of the man- uscript. Vinzenz Hediger, my Swiss trailer-scholar counterpart, found me during his dissertation research. We shared findings, presented at con- ferences together, and became friends, although not reading German has impeded my understanding of his work. He also gave me the honor to participate with him for a brief presentation on trailers for the Winterthur (Switzerland) Short Film Festival in 2000. We hope our respective approaches are complementary. Students in the doctoral program at UCLA have been invaluable col- leagues, including my original Ph.D. classmates, Peter Bloom, Bernard Cook, Colin Gardner, Hyun-ock Im and Lael Loewenstein; and a disserta- tion reading group of Gilberto Blasini, Jim Friedman, Bambi Haggins and Kristen Hatch. Other UCLA dissertators also inspired me along the way, particularly Luisela Alvaray, Vicki Callahan, Victoria Duckett, Susan Englander, Rita Gonzalez, Haden Guest, Jennifer Holt and Maja Manojlovic. The work was significantly assisted by two scholarships from the Plitt Theatre Southern Employees, to whom I am very grateful. My employers and colleagues at the UCLA Library have been extremely sup- portive. I especially want to thank the head of the Arts Library, Gordon Theil, for his advocacy, as well as Janice Koyama and Rita Scherrei. Thanks also to my archival education colleague Steven Ricci, as well as my mentor in librarianship, Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman, whose example helps me keep the faith that library work constitutes the front lines of democracy in education. Thank you to Dietmar Schwärzler and Tanja Widmann, organizers of the conference “You Can Have It: Kinorituale” at the Wien Kunsthalle’s “Projektor” lecture series at Vienna’s Depot, as well as to Julia Ezergailis for her simultaneous translations. The UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media has a dedicated support staff, and I partic- ularly want to thank Zareh Arevshatian, Brian Clark, Julius Lopez and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI Cecilia Wilmott for their help. Thank you to the staff of the UCLA Film and Television Archive for facilitating my trailer viewing and providing information, especially Dan Einstein, Charles Hopkins, Eddie Richmond and Martha Yee; and of course again to Bob Rosen, for his mentorship during my archival fellowship year. Thanks also to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, especially Barbara Hall and Linda Mehr. I am grateful as well to Jo Donaldson and Debbie Fine, former colleagues at Lucasfilm Ltd., where the seeds of my interest in promotional film paratexts were planted in the 1980s. My friends Olaf Kallstrom and Smitty gave me insight into contemporary trailer production practices. Other friends and mentors, including Norma Barzman, Joe Brenner, Michele Benzamin-Miki, Barbara Clare, Glenn Farr, A. P. Gonzalez, Ray Greenfield, Harry Kelley, Linda Moakes, Charlotte Norris, Janet Patterson, Caitrióna Reed, Stan Rowett, Kay Salz and Douw Smith inspired me every day. And finally, my gratitude to my family—and my shining parents, Margot Starr and Michael Kernan—only deepens as time goes by. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK 1 Trailers: A Cinema of (Coming) Attractions railers, or previews of coming attractions, are both praised T and reviled by film scholars and regular moviegoers alike. “They give away too much of the movie.” “They’re better than the films.” “They only show the spectacular parts.” “All the best jokes are in the trailer.” “They lie.” “They’re the best part of going to the movies.” “They’re too loud.” At the same time, they are used by both groups precisely as they’re meant to be used, as free samples to aid in moviegoing decision making. And in the contemporary market, trailers’ reach is ever expanding, with their inclusion on videotapes, DVDs, and on the Internet, where they are an increasingly popular and influential marketing tool. Yet very little scholarly attention has been paid to the way trailers characterize films, and thus presume audience desire, in order to sell them.1 While trailers are a form of advertising, they are also a unique form of narrative film exhibition, wherein promotional discourse and narra- tive pleasure are conjoined (whether happily or not). Thus this book is not a study of film advertising as a whole, and will not treat television advertising for films, nor key art such as posters. I am defining a movie trailer as a brief film text that usually displays images from a specific feature film while asserting its excellence, and that is created for the purpose of projecting in theaters to promote a film’s theatrical release. Trailers are film paratexts that are especially important to study in an era when promotion and visual narrative have become increasingly difficult to disentangle in all kinds of popular media, whether music