Test 2

Please select your preferred language.

請選擇你慣用的語言。

请选择你惯用的语言。

English
中文简体
台灣繁體
香港繁體

Login

Remember Me

New to Fridae?

Fridae Mobile

Advertisement
Highlights

More About Us

5 Oct 2011

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

A very cheeky Morgan Spurlock pulls back the curtains and shows us the inner workings of stealth advertising in film and TV.

 Director: Morgan Spurlock

Screenplay: Morgan Spurlock, Jeremy Chilnick

Cast: Morgan Spurlock, JJ Abrams, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Donald Trump, Brett Ratner, Quentin Tarantino, OK Go

Coming in the post-Michael Moore era of documentary filmmaking, Morgan Spurlock may be the best living documentarian yet. As Spurlock has proven with his break-out Super Size Me, there is still a place in this world for documentaries that entertain and educate without being adversarial, hectoring, and shrill. In a world where more and more issues are becoming polarised, that’s an achievement.

In The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock takes on the polarising issue of product placement and stealth advertising in film and television with grace, humour, sincerity, and a willingness to be non-partisan. The premise of the documentary and the cornerstone that makes it so cleverly entertaining – Spurlock learns about product placement by setting out making a film that is 100% funded by product placements and this is the same film that you are watching in the cinema.

Of course, there is the prerequisite show-and-tell segment of just how insidious product placement has become in popular entertainment, just to show less media-savvy audiences how much they’re being advertised to. And a few interviews with the standard academic talking heads and consumer group advocates, as well as artists whose work would never have been made without paid sponsorship. It’s all very educational, of course.

But what makes The Greatest Movie Ever Sold such a cheeky, post-modern and, as an advertising executive in the film calls it, “pleasingly circular”, is watching Morgan Spurlock pitch this documentary idea to receptive corporations, negotiate terms with them, making the most extravagant promises to get their sponsorship, and then see each promise fulfilled while generating laughs, exposing the inner workings of media advertising, while never compromising the integrity of his project.

Is Spurlock a sell-out then? Not by any means. The puckish filmmaker insists on total transparency, documenting in fascinating detail the entire process for us – and demystifies the phenomenon of advertising. By surrendering himself to that process, Spurlock surrenders himself to the possibility of having his cake and eating it too.

Reader's Comments

Be the first to leave a comment on this page!

Please log in to use this feature.

Social


Select News Edition

Featured Profiles

Now ALL members can view unlimited profiles!

Languages

View this page in a different language:

Like Us on Facebook

Partners

 ILGA Asia - Fridae partner for LGBT rights in Asia IGLHRC - Fridae Partner for LGBT rights in Asia

Advertisement