Audience-ology by Kevin Goetz

Author:Kevin Goetz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tiller Press
Published: 2021-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

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George Folsey Jr. is an accomplished editor and producer, with five decades of movies and TV shows to his credit. He has regaled me with many interesting stories about the test screenings of his films, including a disastrous preview of Animal House, the 1978 frat comedy starring the legendary John Belushi. The film was directed by John Landis and shot in Eugene, Oregon, for less than $3 million. It was groundbreaking for its era, establishing a new genre of “gross-out humor,” and when it was finished, the studio tested it in Denver, where it played like gangbusters. The very next night, it was scheduled for a preview at a big booksellers’ convention in Atlanta. Someone associated with the film—Folsey couldn’t remember who—thought it would be a great public relations opportunity for Animal House. The year before, Star Wars had been shown at the very same convention and had been a huge hit. Belushi, already a big star on Saturday Night Live, had agreed to travel to Atlanta for the preview, where he would surprise the crowd with his appearance.

After the Denver test preview was over, Folsey and head mixer Bill Varney packed up the film and took a late-night flight to Atlanta, arriving at about 5:00 a.m. Tired but bolstered by the great audience reaction to the film in Denver, they made their way to the hotel to catch a few hours of sleep. Their good mood quickly dissipated when they arrived at the convention center later in the day. The sound system was terrible; the screen in the room was an odd size, and they spent hours struggling to get the picture to project correctly; and, to add insult to injury, the movie didn’t get underway until 9:30 at night, and by then, the conventioneers were tired… and quite drunk. They weren’t set up correctly either. The crowd of erudite literary types was totally unprepared for the raunchy comedy that they were about to see. And it bombed.

“Belushi comes up to me at the end of the screening and he’s like, ‘What the fuck? We’ve got to recut this movie. It played terribly!’ ” Several of Belushi’s friends were there, and they had also been at the Denver screening. They calmed the actor down, telling him that the movie was great. “The audience was the problem,” they told him. “Leave George alone.”

But Folsey learned an important lesson from the experience. “If it’s the wrong audience, they’re going to hand your head to you.”

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