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Wednesday, January 1, 2020

The Greatest Story Ever Sold (2011)

Happy New Year!
We go to the polls this year, and we will see.  Are we the country that can be bought?  I think the answer is already known, but the degree to which it is true is massively tilted.
So this movie seems like the way to ring in the year, with our eyes wide open to who we are.
Marshall McLuhan famously said “the medium is the message” but here the message is the movie. Morgan Spurlock, or Supersize Me fame,  actually raises the film’s $1.5 million budget as he makes his movie, and we follow him around as the audience while he does it.  So in point of fact, we know what the oucome is even as we watch him get rejected time and time again.
First he has to round up sponsors for the movie. When Ban Deodorant comes aboard at $50,000, you can feel Spurlock’s excitement after all the rejections. He gets a lengthy hearing from POM’s co-owner Lynda Resnick and her executive team, and even discusses commercials he might make for the company. He eventually makes one.  It just unfolds exactly as you think it will, but somewhere in the back of you r head you hope that it will not be so.  But eyes are wide open.

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