Podcast: Don't Kill the Messenger with Movie Research Expert Kevin Goetz
Guest: Marketing Executive and Producer, Tony Sella

Interview Transcript: 

Announcer (00:03):

From script to screen, every film is brought to life by visionary creatives and executives, all sharing one mission – to captivate the audience. Hosted by award-winning movie strategist, Kevin Goetz, our podcast, Don't Kill The Messenger, offers a filmmaking masterclass through intimate conversations with Hollywood's most influential voices. And now, your host, Kevin Goetz.

Kevin Goetz (00:28):

It's extremely difficult to break through the clutter when marketing movies, but my guest today has an absolute gift for creating the wow factor for posters, trailers, taglines, and promotions. I don't use the acronym GOAT often, but Tony Sella indeed is the greatest of all time in his field. For decades, he has been the creative force behind some of Hollywood's most unforgettable movie campaigns for 20th Century Fox. As a studio executive, strategist, and now producer, he knows better than anyone how to connect movies with audiences and turn a film into a must-see cultural event. Tony, geez, welcome to my show.

Tony Sella (01:13):

Kevin. I'm so glad to be here.

Kevin Goetz (01:15):

So, you are always the guy who gave us work, and I was always so appreciative that you were a fan of the companies I worked at, but also of me personally.

Tony Sella (01:27):

Personally, you. I got a lot out of it. I think that's the thing I like the most because numbers are numbers, but the insight you can get from those live interviews and the focus groups, we solved a lot of problems.

Kevin Goetz (01:40):

Qualitative groups.

Tony Sella (01:41):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (01:42):

It's one thing to have the vendor tell you what you need to do. It's a romantic comedy. It needs more comedy or needs more romance. Like what are you gonna do with that information? It's another thing for you to hear the people say what they're saying, and then you solve it.

*Tony Sella (01:55):

And the most important part is, to me, research is as good as the questions you ask.

Kevin Goetz (02:01):

Thank you. And I agree with that. I want to go even a step before that. Research is only as good as the people that you're interviewing. So if you have shitty sample, you're gonna have shitty results often, right? That's the case, right? I wanna mention some movies that you've been involved with. Hold on, listeners. We'll start with a little movie called Avatar, X-Men, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Planet of the Apes, Alien, Night at the Museum, Maze Runner, Life of Pi, The Simpsons Movie, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, There's Something About Mary, Walk the Line, and Bohemian Rhapsody, and that is just a smattering. Tony, I don't know. Seriously, I'm so in awe of you. I always refer to you as a raw nerve of creative talent. I also said you couldn't manage yourself out of a paper bag.

Tony Sella (02:56):

That's true.

Kevin Goetz (02:57):

Tell me <laugh>, how what I just read to you washes over you.

Tony Sella (03:01):

It sounds really cool, but I had the greatest job in the world, and I love movies, and I love doing it. And out of 980 movies, there's a lot more. <laugh>

Kevin Goetz (03:13):

980, you counted.

Tony Sella (03:15):

Yes.

Kevin Goetz (03:16):

That's extraordinary. And I have to say, without exaggeration, I've probably worked in some form or fashion on 950 of them. I was at Disney with you.

Tony Sella (03:25):

38 or nine years ago.

Kevin Goetz (03:27):

Exactly. And then we did the all the Fox stuff.

Tony Sella (03:30):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (03:30):

I mean, either it was a screening or an ad test, or a right focus group, or even tracking whatever it was. So it's extraordinary that you and I have been in the weeds together, but I wanna go back to your creative process. I always said to you, I'd like you to leave your brain to science because you have this incredible ability to find the essence, find the secret sauce.

*Tony Sella (03:56):

The essential idea they, they call it. That's right. The essential idea is the ability to process information and extract an emotional, relatable story that enhances and magnifies the idea.

Kevin Goetz (04:09):

Okay. You see a movie, Avatar, what's your first step? From a creative standpoint? No one has seen it. Nobody. In fact, I'll go on a limb and say literally the head of the studio hasn't seen it because you are creating something maybe even a year out or six months out. Certainly.

Tony Sella (04:26):

And Avatar was farther out than that. It happens like this. You get a call from John Landau, god rest his soul, a beautiful guy, may he rest in peace, met him on Dick Tracy and Honey I Shrunk the Kids. And we got a call and he says, we're having a screening today at Jim's house in Malibu.

Kevin Goetz (04:44):

Jim Cameron.

Tony Sella (04:44):

Yeah. And come on over, show you what we got. And this is the true story. I mean, it was an assembly, it had some kind of finished storyboard, some live action, whatever. And at beginning, at the end of it, I had tears in my eyes. It was like totally amazing. And it already worked for me as a story.

Kevin Goetz (05:07):

What are you going through in terms of how am I gonna sell this thing? I mean, they're blue creatures and we know that was a problem out of the gate, right? That there were these kind of odd looking figures that could have gone a different way. Right? Yeah. Out of context, what happens to your mind when you see a movie and now you're gonna translate that into a trailer?

Tony Sella (05:31):

It has to be a relatable story. Here's the core value. A broken guy, an ex-warrior looking for a second chance, and in his second chance, he goes somewhere and he goes through this process and he's transformed and enters that world and he finally finds something worth fighting for.

Kevin Goetz (05:52):

It's so funny because this was Don LaFontaine's main place where he recorded, you know, there's an homage to him outside the door here at the studio. And of course, he was famous for those lines, like “in a world.”

Tony Sella (06:04):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (06:04):

Yeah. And so Don and all that stuff that makes a great trailer that you kind of were at the forefront of doing, you and a few others, like Joel Wayne, all that stuff is additive to the core. Where did you first learn your creative language?

Tony Sella (06:21):

I went to Pratt Institute in New York, and Pratt was a concept school I always liked, I draw and I painted, and I love movies and I love movie posters, and I love record albums. And I did all that stuff and I was fascinated with it. And a little research from the alumni who came outta Pratt was George Lois. It was like the father of modern advertising did the Esquire covers, all high-concept stuff. He could tell a story in a single frame. Muhammad Ali with the arrows. Wow.

(06:50):

Andy Warhol and guys like Bill Gold. Bill Gold did every great movie poster. They were ad guys. Lois was an ad guy. Bill Gold was an ad guy. Joel Wayne was an ad guy. Tony Seiger was an ad guy. So their approach was always, what was the concept? Who else? Steven Frankfort, Bill Gold, Peter Bemis, we all went to Pratt. We were Pratties. Oh, big Influence was a guy called George Klauber, who was an art director and a designer did a lot of famous stuff. But the cool thing about George is he was roommates with Andy Warhol.

(07:32):

Oh, at Carnegie Tech, it's now Carnegie Mellon. Also, the other roommate was Philip Pearlstein. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a pretty renowned American painter. In fact, there was an internship that was always up where you could intern with Andy for a week, all that stuff. It was about hijacking popular culture. And when you create a piece, whoever it's for, you have to speak to them in their language. That means editorially, musically, everything. There was this great Jared Lito line that says, tell me the truth. Make my life more interesting, or leave me the fuck alone. Don't tell 'em how to feel. Make them feel kind of idea. That's the attitude of make my life more interesting, make me care, make me feel. Wow. I was always fascinated with commercials, always. I never watched much television short form. But I love, love the commercials. You know, you wonder where, yeah, the yellow went when you wash your teeth with Pepsodent brushed your teeth, whatever, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. Whatever they were. Where's the beef, where all that stuff is.

Kevin Goetz (08:29):

So you had that background already to synthesize, to find the concept. What's the ingredients to make a great trailer? Is there like an alchemy?

*Tony Sella (08:40):

Well, let me answer the question with a story. Lauren Shuler Donner, sweetheart. She asked me if I would do a lecture at one of her classes at USC. And I didn't really want to go, but I showed up and it was a producing class at Peter Stark program and it was a night class. And I walked in there and I gave him my spiel about marketing and movies and how great a, you know, sure. Interesting a trailer is 'cause back then 70% of the people went to the movies to see a movie for the first time in the theater based on the first view of a trailer. So there was this kid sitting up in the front row and he was his his laptop, and they could care less what I was saying. They just wanted to go get something to eat. And he said to me, you know, what's so hard about making a trailer?

*(09:19):

I can make a trailer. I can make a trailer on my laptop. And I said, I'm sure you can, but can you make a good trailer? So here's what I want you to do. I want you to leave here, go to the store, get a jigsaw puzzle that has at least a thousand pieces in it. I want you to take it home. I want you to rip the picture off the top of the box. Open the box. You have 28 pieces to pick. Pick those 28 pieces, arrange 'em in any form you want on the front of the cover. And it has to be so good that the people wanna open the box and put the puzzle together. If you can do that, you made a great trailer.

Kevin Goetz (09:50):

That's what is so brilliant about your campaigns. I'm thinking of Devil Wears Prada, who would take a Prada shoe and using it as a Trident. I mean, it's so genius. It's my favorite movie poster maybe of all time because it tells me everything I need to know. Even the color choices, even the glossiness, all of it. And I know to get to that probably had 1600 comps.

Tony Sella (10:18):

<laugh>. Yeah. Not really. It's what they call a visual idiom, which is you put things together that make a concept. It's like reigning cats and dogs. They don't have anything to do with each other. I always thought like, what will have the most impact?

Kevin Goetz (10:35):

It's what I introduced you as cutting through the clutter.

Tony Sella (10:37):

And we had backups with Meryl and…

Kevin Goetz (10:40):

Floating heads.

Tony Sella (10:41):

Yeah, well I used to call 'em two big heads in a car crash.

Kevin Goetz (10:45):

<laugh>. And there was a time when you could sell movies with floating heads.

Tony Sella (10:48):

Oh, they were a big star. But here's the coolest thing. The director, I think it was David Frankel. And then we started working on the trailer and stuff and we got some good trailers and you tested 'em and they tested well. And then we got the concept of, well Jesus reading a script, the opening of the movie could be amazing. It would tell the whole story and set the whole premise.

Kevin Goetz (11:10):

When she comes into the office.

Tony Sella (11:11):

And that was it. So what we did is we cut a three minute and 22 second opening of the film as the trailer. Funny thing is we tested it. It didn't test as good as the trailers, but…

Kevin Goetz (11:24):

But because you're not getting stories.

Tony Sella (11:25):

But to us, it was better to me and to the group. You know, it's a collaboration.

Kevin Goetz (11:31):

How did you convince them that don't go with the testing scores, but go with our gut?

*Tony Sella (11:35):

Because for good movies, your trailer has to be better for a great movie. You can't have a good trailer if the effect you have from the trailer isn't as powerful as the movie itself. But the effect of three minutes of the opening, that trailer was far more powerful and engaging than a literal story. You can make trailers that are better than movies, but if you have a great movie, you have to have a great trailer.

Kevin Goetz (12:04):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Well, you've sold many movies that were subpar. I mean, there's many examples that were just average movies, but you elevated them.

Tony Sella (12:14):

Right.

Kevin Goetz (12:14):

And that is the genius of marketing, because playability, listeners, of course, is the movie itself.

Tony Sella (12:21):

Right. Don't confuse them.

*Kevin Goetz (12:22):

Yeah. Don't confuse playability and marketability 'cause playability, that's the filmmakers and the heads of the studio, heads of production that have to make the best version of what they're making to appeal to the largest number of folks. And of course, to achieve the highest definite recommend score, which is your golden number, which is your money number, but a screening and testing the product doesn't tell you how the piece going to ultimately do in its opening. That's marketing. And that's the genius of Tony Sella and others like Tony, who are heads of creative advertising and are heads of marketing. Because you've got to find a way to persuade. You've gotta find a way to not only make people aware, and you can buy awareness, you can buy it, you can spend money and have the entire world know about your movie, but you can't buy interest. That is the genius of you.

Tony Sella (13:21):

Conversion. I have a trailer story. So I'm a terrible public speaker. I've been asked many times to teach. And then I think it was Tom, Tom Rothman, had a lot of advice. He said to me, what you know you can't teach. So I took his word for it <laugh>. And that's the way the business was. So the other thing we did is we treated every movie the same. It sounds cliche, it sounds like BS, but it was truth. We had as much attention on Phone Booth as we had on Avatar and what it takes to get a movie made with the writers and the producers and the directors. You know, five and six years on a project, and it all comes down to two minutes in 30 seconds.

Kevin Goetz (14:05):

There's Independence Day that just popped up behind you.

Tony Sella (14:08):

Right.

Kevin Goetz (14:08):

Is it easier in some way to advertise Independence Day than it is Phone Booth?

Tony Sella (14:15):

Yes.

Kevin Goetz (14:16):

I would agree with that.

Tony Sella (14:17):

Yeah. I mean, your big tentpole movies, your pre-awareness of titles,

Kevin Goetz (14:21):

Well, you changed the landscape. Let me just say one of your greatest moments was the Super Bowl ad of the blowing up of the White House.

Tony Sella (14:29):

Right?

Kevin Goetz (14:29):

I mean that was a game changer for the movie. It was also a game changer for the Super Bowl and movie advertising on the Super Bowl because everybody talked about that and that's where you solidified. What'd you pay for that, by the way?

Tony Sella (14:43):

I have, it must have been 3 or $4 million. What had happened is there was gonna be a board of directors meeting at the time in Australia, and Peter had just come on to be chairman Peter Chernin. And he called me over and showed me some pieces and said, can you put a piece together to show them? And he had a couple of effects like the White House blowing up, some other stuff.

Kevin Goetz (15:08):

That was Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.

Tony Sella (15:10):

Yeah. And so I cut this thing and then what happened? There was a change there. Bob came on and then Roland came back to the studio, and he, at that point took over Independence Day. And so there was Pam Levine and Jeffrey Godsick and stuff, and Bob. And there was a debate at the studio, actually some people wanted to call it Invasion Earth. Oh. And the theory was that people don't like if the fight doesn't come to earth. And then Peter Chernin reminded the group of three other movies that George Lucas made.

Kevin Goetz (15:47):

Ah, yeah. Star Wars.

*Tony Sella (15:49):

So we had this meeting, and so I came back into the group and there was some debate, like not spend the money, whatever. And I said, well you only spend the money when you have the goods, because an okay spot doesn't get any better if you run it a hundred times. It's the same impact. It's their first impression. And it is like, well what's the campaign? And it just comes to you. Here's the campaign.

Kevin Goetz (16:15):

Do you see a trailer moment in your head, Tony? 

Tony Sella (16:16):

Yeah. With the visuals because it was. No, I'm saying do you? Yes, Roland's a great visual director. His stuff comes tailor-made for trailers and stuff. But the big thing about it was you could hijack the event, the Super Bowl, you have the White House. And I had built the campaign back to: enjoy Valentine's Day, it may be your last.

Speaker 4 (16:39):

Oh.

Tony Sella (16:40):

Enjoy President's Day. It may be your last, whatever it was. Whatever came before.

Speaker 4 (16:45):

Oh, I love that.

Tony Sella (16:46):

Enjoy the Super Bowl. It may be your last. And then a couple of great things were done and we did an integration with Apple that was amazing. A 30-second spot. To me, that was the essence of it. Enjoy the Super Bowl. That may be your last.

Kevin Goetz (17:00):

Did you know you were gonna get the praise, the impact when that appeared on the Super Bowl that it was gonna create that kind of buzz?

Tony Sella (17:07):

Yeah, I thought it would personally, but it was a whole team effort.

Kevin Goetz (17:11):

Incredible.

Tony Sella (17:11):

And Roland Emmerich is an ad guy.

Kevin Goetz (17:14):

Gimme a movie that you worked on that you really proud of because it shouldn't have opened to as well as it did.

Tony Sella (17:21):

Well there's two kinds of those movies. The movie I'm super proud of, there'll always be Avatar, right? Because it's number one.

Kevin Goetz (17:29):

Still the highest-grossing movie of all time. Is that correct?

*Tony Sella (17:32):

Yeah. But your ego is not your amigo in this business.

Kevin Goetz (17:35):

Your ego is not your amigo.

Tony Sella (17:37):

Nope. So one of the ones I'm most proud of is Life of Pi for a lot of reasons. They said it was a movie that couldn't be filmed, and they said it was definitely a movie that couldn't be. And it ended up doing 450 whatever it did. And he won the Academy Award. And that was a very intense like research kind of thing. 

Kevin Goetz (18:01):

You put your ass on the line for that one.

Tony Sella (18:02):

Yeah. Both for the film to making the film. And Elizabeth did an amazing job from what the first cut was till where it ended up.

Kevin Goetz (18:12):

We were testing a movie with no tiger, it was a CGI tiger. Right. And it still scored well.

Tony Sella (18:17):

That was a movie about taking this journey to a place that you've never been before. It wasn't the story of a boy lost on a boat, and it had the right visuals to tell a certain story.

Kevin Goetz (18:29):

There's another movie that you worked on on the other side of that, Taken. Oh, Taken.

Tony Sella (18:35):

Here is the Taken story.

Kevin Goetz (18:36):

Yeah.

Tony Sella (18:36):

Uh, you get a call, we're gonna watch a movie down in the Z room for Darryl Zanuck and we're gonna screen what they call the negative pickup. Right. We had money, and we had a fresh deal, and it was with Luc Besson's company and they had done business with them before. And so we went down there to watch it and it was long and it was super violent.

Kevin Goetz (19:00):

But cool.

*Tony Sella (19:00):

But it was cool. It was a great thing. But when I saw him say, I have a particular set of skills, it wrote itself.

Kevin Goetz (19:08):

You took that line and said, that's my campaign.

Tony Sella (19:11):

That's my campaign. And then we repeated it in the poster. It's a silhouette graphic, but reemphasizing that and, and the whole concept was this. Like you got it. Like how much trouble would you be in if you kidnapped James Bond's daughter? You'd be in a lot of trouble. So Luc had called me and said, well what'd you think? I said, really good. But to tell you the truth, it was sort of ultra-violent in certain places and whatever. 

Kevin Goetz (19:39):

Yeah. But it was a great revenge picture.

Tony Sella (19:41):

Yeah, I know. And what happened was we weren't gonna release it.

Kevin Goetz (19:45):

I remember this. Yeah.

Tony Sella (19:46):

And it went on forever. And in the meantime, I cut the trailers, and they were some of the best test trailers in the history of Fox.

Kevin Goetz (19:52):

I remember there were so many ripoffs since then. People have to remember this was the first time that movie, and Liam was like a revelation doing it.

Tony Sella (20:01):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (20:01):

Because he's not your typical action star by any stretch. And Liam, at the time, he was pretty cold. He hadn't made a movie in a while, and this really reinvigorated his career.

Tony Sella (20:11):

Right. And for us, the movie was inexpensive. 

Kevin Goetz (20:16):

And there were how many others after that?

Tony Sella (20:17):

I dunno. 5, 6, 7. I think they've done, it's incredible. They've done at least a billion dollars I think. But here's the interesting thing. So there was a discussion, we're not releasing it. Go to video, da da da da da. And we kept fighting for it and fighting for it. And finally we said we needed a date. And so I think it was the, okay, you want a date for a male action picture, Super Bowl weekend. And we had a limited amount to spend. And we said, okay, we'll do it.

Kevin Goetz (20:49):

You lose Sunday.

Tony Sella (20:49):

It opened to $25 million. 

Kevin Goetz (20:53):

That’s unbelievable. It changed precedent. And that happened with Pretty Woman. You were at Disney then, right?

Tony Sella (20:58):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (20:59):

And that was Bob Levin. Bob Levin. And that was a January release. And it was, you can never release a movie in January. How can you do that? It's suicide. And of course it did so, so well. And it changed that whole narrative.

*Tony Sella (21:12):

And to be totally honest, my process of always wanting to have a core concept to build off of, in which every other digital, publicity, whatever, could all have one band, one sound, is that, combined with my four years at Disney, which I always say I got my PhD there.

Kevin Goetz (21:31):

Oh, that's great.

Tony Sella (21:32):

Sitting in the room with guys learning about the high concept and the business and the sell and everything.

Kevin Goetz (21:37):

Who, who, mostly?

Tony Sella (21:38):

Jeffrey.

Kevin Goetz (21:38):

Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Tony Sella (21:40):

It was a whole lot of listening. And that's when Joe would wander in and with his little piece of crumpled up paper.

Kevin Goetz (21:46):

That's Joe Farrell, my boss at the time.

Tony Sella (21:48):

And he wasn't interested in the numbers, but interested in the little bits that they could extract from the data that they gathered. And they had a great run. Good Morning Vietnam, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Kevin Goetz (22:00):

How'd you get the Disney job?

Tony Sella (22:03):

So I go to New York, I go to Pratt, I get involved in all this stuff. There's some guys there working in this agency called DHB. They said, Hey, you should come see what's going on. So I worked on a campaign, and they hired me. So I did that. I worked there for a while. And then one day, sit in my office and I got a phone call from a headhunter. Pamela Robinson.

Kevin Goetz (22:22):

Pamela Robinson.

Tony Sella (22:23):

She was great.

Kevin Goetz (22:24):

Wasn't she married to Fred Specktor? Yeah. She did all the marketing hires in town.

Tony Sella (22:28):

Yeah. And so I thought it was a joke. They said, yeah, well we can't give you the name. I said, well then I can't be interested. And so finally, she said it was Disney. And I like almost fainted because being the guy who draws and paints and…

Kevin Goetz (22:43):

Who'd you interview with?

Tony Sella (22:45):

I went there and I interviewed with Robert John and Bob Levin.

Kevin Goetz (22:50):

And Bob hired you.

Tony Sella (22:51):

Yeah. But I had to be there in like 10 days.

Kevin Goetz (22:54):

Wow.

Tony Sella (22:55):

So, and we had just moved up to Chappaqua, Westchester, in an old farmhouse.

Kevin Goetz (23:00):

You and your beautiful bride, Peggy.

Tony Sella (23:01):

My wife, Peggy. And we were gonna raise our kids there and stuff. And we just got this house and, and you uprooted your life. You know, God takes care of drunks and fools and I'm both, so.

Kevin Goetz (23:12):

Peggy was your rock always..

Tony Sella (23:13):

She's my muse.

Kevin Goetz (23:13):

She is your muse. Call out to Peggy. How much I love Peggy.

Tony Sella (23:17):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (23:17):

Peggy's an extraordinary woman and I loved her. The first night I danced with her on the floor at Anthony Goldschmidt's Christmas party with Frank Sinatra Junior's Orchestra. I just saw Tina Sinatra the other night for dinner. And I reminded her that Frank played that night, and Peggy and I got up there and Neil went, what did you do? I said, what? I just asked Peggy to dance. The Goldschmidt's have to dance first. Right, right. I was like, oh fuck. And now you're at Disney. You mentioned several movies and then…

Tony Sella (23:46):

Yeah, I mean Good Morning, Vietnam, Three Men and a Baby, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Dick Tracy.

Kevin Goetz (23:53):

Dead Poet’s Society.

Tony Sella (23:54):

Dead Poet’s Society. They had done Down and Out in Beverly Hills. 

Kevin Goetz (23:57):

Oh my God. All the Bette Midler. That studi…

Tony Sella (24:00):

Was the house of hits.

Kevin Goetz (24:02):

No, initially, I mean.

Tony Sella (24:03):

Well.

Kevin Goetz (24:04):

It was the house of has-beens. Right? It was like Katzenberg and Eisner just drew life back into it and reinvented the entire studio, and they were number one, just an extraordinary. And you were part of that renaissance. Three years out of the five years you were part of that renaissance. And Bob Levin really was right in that 'cause he was there, he had a long run. He was there I think 11 years at Disney.

Tony Sella (24:27):

Yeah. And it was a genius move to hire Bob because Bob came from an ad agency, and he knew the world of McDonald's and all that stuff. And they were the guys in the Walmarts too that started those relationships.

Kevin Goetz (24:39):

That's right. He's one of the only people from Madison Avenue or Michigan Avenue, in this case, who actually succeeded in the job because our business doesn't like outsiders. And that would've been an outsider. But Bob had to prove himself, and he did. So I'm very proud of him. He's my COO. His entire third career meaning advertising, number one. Number two, being inside the studio system. And number three, being the president and COO position at Screen Engine has been nothing short of extraordinary. When we come back, we are going to talk to Tony about other movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and get further into his creative genius mind. We'll be back in a moment.

Jacqueline Coley (25:21):

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Kevin Goetz (25:51):

And we're back with Tony Sella. Tony, you said during the break, the reason I'm so good at two or three-minute stories is because that's my attention span <laugh>. That's true. So wait a minute. I want to talk about, before we get into Bohemian Rhapsody, the notion of your full breadth of marketing. Because it's not just creating a trailer, creating a one-sheet. Yes. Those are pivotal parts of a campaign, but you also do these cool promotional tie-ins and things. One I remember was The Simpsons, right? And I think Burger King.

Tony Sella (26:26):

Right?

Kevin Goetz (26:26):

Can you tell us about that?

Tony Sella (26:28):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (26:28):

In two or three minutes now.

Tony Sella (26:30):

Yes I can. I'll do it very quickly and gonna lose you. There's the first story because The Simpsons was fascinating to me because it was a time at the studio when they were coming up like on their 20th year, the longest running show in history, most successful. And it was starting to even out a little, the older crowd wasn't worried with the storyline, da da da da. They were nervous. And it was a big risk to do this movie because it could be the end of the end. And I had never watched an episode of The Simpsons. I never watched episode of much because…

Kevin Goetz (27:00):

You're always working.

Tony Sella (27:00):

If you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday. Yeah. 

Kevin Goetz (27:04):

It was Jeffrey's edict.

Tony Sella (27:05):

So the very first time, so I did a kind of a research and went over the group and we were working on stuff and the whole concept is how do we get people into that world that they loved.

Kevin Goetz (27:14):

Into the animated Simpsons world.

*Tony Sella (27:16):

Like the Simpson’s couch. And I remembered this meeting because my first meeting, I walk over and it's the great James L. Brooks, you know, three Oscars in one night. It's Al Jean, the head writer Richard Sakai and Matt Groening. And you walk into the room, and you're sitting there and you're nervous. And I said, this is gonna be great. And I've never watched an episode of The Simpsons. And I think it was Al Jean says, then how in the hell can you sell the movie? And I remembered he said.

Kevin Goetz (27:51):

Why would you do that?

Tony Sella (27:53):

Because I'm interested in the movie, not the series.

Kevin Goetz (27:57):

Oh, that's kind of genius. Keep going.

Tony Sella (27:59):

Yeah. And the fact that I can only sell it as a movie because it's not an animated movie, it's a movie that happens to be animated.

Kevin Goetz (28:10):

By the way, didn't Jeffrey always say that?

Tony Sella (28:12):

Yes.

Kevin Goetz (28:12):

That you have to treat, when we did Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid.

Tony Sella (28:18):

pretend it's Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. That's what I mean about getting your, it just happens to be animated, and I saw a little twinkle in James L. Brooks' eye and their job is to be outrageous and stuff. Our very first teaser was bad 3D animation. And it was something like finally a movie that's proud to be ugly. Simpson Movie in 2D.

Kevin Goetz
Where did you get that? Where does it come from? Tony Sella's mind.

Tony Sella
Yeah. It comes from other writers too. Not my mind, if I don't have the idea, I know one when I see one. And there's been a lot of people that came up with a lot of great ideas.

Kevin Goetz (28:50):

That's fair.

Tony Sella (28:51):

It's ability.

Kevin Goetz (28:53):

To be a great curator as well.

Tony Sella (28:54):

It's the Fricking Simpsons. And that started this whole process.

Kevin Goetz (28:58):

But there's such an earnestness about you, Tony. You are like a raw nerve of creativity. That's why so many filmmakers love you. Who wouldn't love somebody who's going to fight for their movie creatively and treat it as much as any other movie or care as much? And you've always cared so much. That was my job. Josh Goldstein once said to me something interesting. I was telling him something I didn't think was gonna work so well. And he kind of laid into me and he said, I don't have the luxury of hearing that and accepting that. I have to make things work. Right. Or some version of that. And I got it and, he was right and I was wrong and I thought about it and said, yeah, we gotta find a way to just make this work. Anything and everything. Right, right. What's your biggest, I won't say failure, but your biggest letdown? Maybe you do consider it a failure. A name of a movie that just no matter what. I can think of a couple.

Tony Sella (30:02):

Well I can think of more movies that were bad that we opened.

Kevin Goetz (30:07):

Gimme one of those.

Tony Sella (30:07):

Than more movies that were bad that we didn't.

Kevin Goetz (30:10):

Can I have an example?

Tony Sella (30:11):

Like the Happening.

Kevin Goetz (30:13):

M Night Shamalyan?

Tony Sella (30:14):

Yeah. And that was with Mark Wahlberg. And that was a classic collaboration between the research and especially the focus groups on that. Because we cut a lot of commercials and it was a very kind of austere film and it had like maybe seven strange scenes, like the guys hanging from trees like and all this other kind of stuff. And we'd cut all this stuff,and it wasn't working. And then you asked them, what do you think Sixth Sense was rated? Do you remember this?

Kevin Goetz (30:45):

I do.

*Tony Sella (30:47):

And they all said R And you said No, it was PG-13. And you said, what if I told you this was M Night Shamalyan's first R-rated film, and all the hands went up, and the campaign became the first R-rated film from M Night Shamalyan. And we cheated a little, made the R kind of big.

Kevin Goetz (31:08):

And he's wonderful to work with because he's very collaborative, isn't he? 

Tony Sella (31:11):

Yeah, he is very collaborative. He's very smart. I mean that opened to like 34 or whatever.

Kevin Goetz (31:17):

How much did you have to do with, say, 12 Years A Slave? Did you have anything to do with those? No, those were all done by Searchlight. 

Tony Sella (31:23):

Yeah. Peter Rice,

Kevin Goetz (31:25):

They did a really great job as well.

Tony Sella (31:27):

Because they knew who their audience were.

Kevin Goetz (31:29):

Exactly. Let's go to Bohemian Rhapsody. Okay, tell me about Bo Rapp. Graham was my first guest, by the way.

Tony Sella (31:36):

Graham was terrific. Graham was so helpful.

Kevin Goetz (31:39):

He loves you.

Tony Sella (31:39):

He has such great insight, and he's like a real producer.

Kevin Goetz (31:43):

A real old-time producer.

Tony Sella (31:46):

Old-time real producer,

Kevin Goetz (31:48):

Just is the driving creative force and everything else. And he shows up every day and truly has a voice.

Tony Sella (31:55):

And he doesn't quit till it's perfect. I had come back to the studio at the time, and they were working on it. What happened is I left the movie side, and then one day I got a call from Peter Rice and he asks to have lunch. And I said okay. And we started talking about what I wanted to do, and I kind of told him what I was thinking, and what he wanted me to do was he wanted me to do this retrospective piece on Rupert Murdoch. And so that's how it started. And then we talked more about what I wanted to do, and I said that through some of the stuff I had been doing, like on Prometheus standalone original content for films. And you can only do those on like Ridley Scott films 'cause he has the muscle and he has Jake Scott and directors who can do the pieces for you and stuff. You know, short form. 

Kevin Goetz (32:47):

Yeah.

Tony Sella (32:48):

Because it's really hard 'cause he's gotta make his movie. And we had done stuff like that and stuff on Apes and this original content thing, which really added value to the campaigns, and that I wanna do that for brands. And then he said, well why don't you do it here?

Kevin Goetz (33:05):

Oh, that's genius.

Tony Sella (33:06):

Well you have…

Kevin Goetz (33:07):

And what'd you name it

Tony Sella (33:08):

Originally it was a AKS and then…

Kevin Goetz (33:11):

That's your initial, that's your initial?

Tony Sella (33:12):

No, it was, it's a old movie term for all kinds of shit.

Speaker 4 (33:16):

Oh, I love that.

Tony Sella (33:17):

Then I was super inspired when I was younger going to Pratt by a very famous graffiti artist. Oh, whose name was Lonnie Merrill. But they called him phase two. It's really involved in the hip-hop thing. I had a buddy Tony Silver, who did a movie called Star Wars and the only guy he couldn't get to participate was phase two. Because by nature, you're supposed to be anonymous. And the whole thing came from the Bronx was dying, and these kids wanted to know that they existed. So they used to tag the trains and if your stuff was really good, you got it up in all five boroughs, and they would call that All City. So it was kind of homage to him. Sure. I turned it to All City 'cause everyone kept saying AKS what the, what does that mean?

Kevin Goetz (34:01):

So going back to Bohemian Rhapsody. So you were saying we were extolling Graham's virtues.

*Tony Sella (34:07):

Yes, yes. And there was a lot of stuff that had been done, and they were doing the full court press and all the divisions and sort of overanalyzing all of it. And I remember Graham showed me a cut section, and it blew me away. I said, I can't believe this guy. He's gonna win the Academy Award. This is unbelievable.

Kevin Goetz (34:26):

Of course, Rami Malek went on to win the Academy Award.

Tony Sella (34:29):

It's unbelievable. He goes, yeah, but we still gotta do this. And you know, they had a little trouble.

Kevin Goetz (34:33):

The original director didn't finish the film. They brought in another director to finish it.

Tony Sella (34:37):

Correct. And so I was a little nervous, but the movie wasn't that expensive.

Kevin Goetz (34:43):

Do you remember that first screening? It was so outrageous.

Tony Sella (34:45):

Yeah.

Kevin Goetz (34:46):

Before I continue, you and I have been through some firsts at screenings where we turn to each other and we're like, oh my God.

Tony Sella (34:55):

We're low fiving because you, you have to manage expectations.

Kevin Goetz (34:59):

There's Something About Mary.

Tony Sella (35:00):

Right.

Kevin Goetz (35:01):

Borat. Speed. I mean, people were doing the wave.

Tony Sella (35:08):

They were tearing the seats outta the theater in Long Beach.

Kevin Goetz (35:11):

Independence Day.

Tony Sella (35:11):

And by the way, that movie was screened with the last seven minutes, storyboards. They hadn't shot the trailer, and that was a big deal 'cause the regime was changing. Exactly. Peter was there. Tom Jacobson was still there. That was one of the last of his.

*Kevin Goetz (35:24):

But it's amazing. What I'm trying to say is listeners that when Tony and I are in a room and we have the privilege, the honor of sitting there with the audience for the first time, when you actually get validated and confirmed for, in Tony's case really pushing for a movie like Taken or really advocating for a Jim Cameron picture and say it's gonna be the biggest movie of all time, whatever it may be, it's really affirming to hear that audience, that reaction. It's just nothing like it. Right?

Tony Sella (35:58):

Yeah. Nothing. And with guys like James Cameron, you look at his films from Terminator, even The Abyss, even his films have always been great. True Lies.

Kevin Goetz (36:08):

You know it's funny when we present the numbers at the end of a screening and there's a little inner circle and many studio heads and heads of marketing and distribution all stand around with the filmmakers all in this little circle. And if something scores extremely well, every now and then you see the marketing people sort of walk out of the circle ever so slightly 'cause they get a little nervous. Oh shit, the pressure's on. Right, right. Tony steps in further to the circle because he gets energized and rejuvenated, and his mind is going nuts. I always admire that about you.

Tony Sella (36:47):

And there's tidbits of information because these are all very talented people with, you know, insight is the best vision.

Kevin Goetz (36:54):

A hundred percent. Oh. So how did you approach the Bo Rap campaign?

Tony Sella (36:57):

So when I got there and you do your research, they tested a bunch of trailers and you know, it was perceived as. They had started on the campaign before I got there. Got it. There were a bunch of stuff laying around and a bunch of trailers, none of it testing. And then I sort of always say, if you wanna participate, you have to do your homework. You have to know what the problem is, where you've been, what's been done. And kind of assess the situation and face value. Like Queen, they're like 37th on the list of records sold.

Kevin Goetz (37:31):

Like all-time artists?

*Tony Sella (37:34):

Yeah. So you know, I'm thinking, hmm. So maybe it's a niche place, maybe it's a whatever place. Right. So this isn't a concert film. This isn't one of those things. And I had learned a lot on Walk the Line where we did stuff like, wait a minute, it's Johnny Cash. That's why we hired Shepard Fairey to do the posters. So it'd be interesting, cool. And also, I didn't want to go out with a shot of Joaquin because the first thing people say is that doesn't look like Johnny Cash. So you turn his back, his iconic over-the-back guitar, and you commandeer ppp culture, and you have Shepard Faireyand oh by the way, Shepard did it 'cause he was a big fan of Johnny Cash. And also, the digital people came up with it. We did research and I was looking to this thing and I said, do you guys know that there's like 50 of the biggest music stars in the world that list in their top five influences Johnny Cash, from Ozzy Osborne to Eric Clapton.

Kevin Goetz (38:30):

Sure.

Tony Sella (38:30):

So what happened was, back to the essential idea, right? The only thing more incredible than their music was his story.

Kevin Goetz (38:40):

Wow.

Tony Sella (38:40):

And then we came up with a line, fearless lives forever.

Kevin Goetz (38:44):

Ooh.

Tony Sella (38:44):

Because if you saw the film and then going through all the thing of photographs of this and that, we came across this headshot and it was funny. It was comp two, and it was this cropped beautiful thing. And he looked just like Freddy. And like we bathed it in violet because to me, violet's like a eighties, nineties, 2000 color. 

Kevin Goetz (39:08):

See the genius.

Tony Sella (39:09):

And then we got to real work and realize that the audience, you had to have them wanna know more about Freddy. Most people thought they knew everything there was.

Kevin Goetz (39:22):

I barely knew anything about him. Yeah. Well, and you got me so like wanting to learn more because you heard his name a lot, but you really didn't know much about him.

Tony Sella (39:30):

And the fact that, you know, with the director thing.

Kevin Goetz (39:35):

It could have gone a different way.

Tony Sella (39:36):

Yeah. And so we had Queen to deal with themselves 'cause they had approval on a lot of stuff.

Kevin Goetz (39:42):

And that's a whole other thing you have to deal with.

Tony Sella (39:43):

Yeah. And they're all smart guys. They have like PhDs in physics and stuff, so you know what I mean?

Kevin Goetz (39:50):

Wow. And the movie ends up doing close to a billion dollars.

*Tony Sella (39:54):

A billion at the time. Deadpool smashed it all. I think Logan may have, but it was the highest-grossing R-rated film. And it was one of the highest-grossing music. Yeah. It was made for a real price. But what we did is we realized that also how they made their songs and they had scenes in there were interesting. Like how they come up with, you know what I mean, the different songs. So we put a kind of a, kind of a mashup together. It was technically a mashup, teaser, nothing was testing, and it didn't test. And we got all kinds of things back. Like, well you should show this and you should show that and you should show this. And it was pretty interesting. And so we made this freaking teaser and we said this is great. And we mashed up all the songs, four or five songs, and they're like, you can't do the Queen songs. Queen's gonna get, they're gonna reject this.

Kevin Goetz (40:47):

I hear you. You're like, I mean listen to research to a point. And then I've gotta trust my gut.

*Tony Sella (40:52):

Trust your gut. There's only two things, it's a pass or fail business. Either 10 people in the room stand up and say, that's the greatest fucking thing I've ever seen. Or they don't say anything.

Kevin Goetz (41:04):

Oh.

Tony Sella (41:05):

You know what I mean?

Kevin Goetz (41:05):

I do.

Tony Sella (41:06):

And so we made the decision, Deadpool, I guess it was Deadpool 2 by then. We attached it to Deadpool, and everyone was like, oh my God, Freddy and you're gonna have that like almost kiss in the trailer and they're gonna like laugh. It's a big mistake. Well it went up with Deadpool and had 88 million downloads in 24 hours.

Kevin Goetz (41:29):

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Tony Sella (41:31):

And the rest is history.

*Kevin Goetz (41:32):

I have some Tony Sella-isms I want to end with, but I wanna read a few of these and just sort of see how they wash over you. Going back full circle here. “Creativity is the ability to process information and extract an emotional, relatable idea or story.” Love that. The next one is, “all the tools in the world are meaningless without the essential idea or narrative.” “The essential idea should have an emotional connection to your audience.” Very important. “Present an experience that needs to be shared together. An event with theatrical urgency.” Let's unpack some of that. Wow.

Kevin Goetz (42:19):

That's it. That's it. It speaks for itself.

Tony Sella (42:22):

I was looking over a question and it said something about how have things changed? And if you have some time, want you to go look up the articles on Jaws, you know how things have changed. And Jaws started their campaign with a 55-second teaser special shoot underwater with a narrator and a great line. Something like it hunts, it does this, it does this, it does that. It's like God created a devil and gave it jaws.

Kevin Goetz (42:53):

Mm.

Tony Sella (42:53):

And it cuts to her swimming above the water. And then the second trailer and the build, the first movie to run TV advertising was Jaws. And it's the same playbook as Batman. And as, 

Kevin Goetz (43:07):

What do you mean when you say media is as important as the message?

*Tony Sella (43:11):

It is because you have to have the right message to the right people. You have to speak to the people in their language.

Kevin Goetz (43:18):

So if you put your best advertising sent to the wrong folks, it's all for naught.

*Tony Sella (43:25):

Yeah. You can run 10- or 15-second spots in a program. You can shake it up. My biggest thing was, your essential idea is the best idea when you can magnify it in all areas.

Kevin Goetz (43:37):

And then of course.

Tony Sella (43:38):

A magnifiable idea.

*Kevin Goetz (43:39):

And then of course it's one that I say all the time, make a movie for everybody. Make a movie for somebody, but don't make a movie for nobody. Correct. And I'm aware of the double negative. And you say often, if it's not an event for somebody, it's for nobody.

*Tony Sella (43:55):

Phone booth can be its event, Avatar can be its event, and it takes the same amount of creative effort. Yeah, absolutely. And there's something else I wanna add. It's always been my philosophy that the most important thing in creatives is passion first, talent, and taste. And none of them can be acquired.

Kevin Goetz (44:20):

Boy, that's true.

Tony Sella (44:22):

Also, I just wanna be clear about one thing. Yeah. I could have never done any of this without the people that I worked with.

Kevin Goetz (44:28):

Who were some of the great people you worked with?

Tony Sella (44:30):

With the family, with Peter Chernin who changed the whole culture at Fox. Jim G., Tom Rothman. Two people that couldn't be more opposite that had a relationship that worked. You know Tom Sherrick, Liz Gabler, Peter Rice, Bob Harper.

Kevin Goetz (44:52):

Wow.

Tony Sella (44:52):

Pam Levine. Jeffrey Godsick.

Kevin Goetz (44:55):

How about some of your vendor relationships?

Tony Sella (44:57):

Smitty brought me to Fox. He is the greatest man. Smitty brought me over 'cause there was an article in the Hollywood Reporter of the poster finalists and five out of the 10 of the finalists were mine. And Smitty was really instrumental. He's given me the chance to do AV and I learned a lot from him.

Kevin Goetz (45:15):

You have won so many awards. Have you ever counted how many Leo’s?

*Tony Sella (45:19):

No, I'm not an awards guy. I'll tell you why. I'm not an awards guy in terms of, I'm a Madison Avenue Awards guy, but not a Key Art awards guy because I think there has to be a monetary value connected to the win. It's not art for art's sake. And I did a test. I created a trailer on Walk the Line, a teaser that was amazing. And it was cut to Johnny Cash's version of Nine Inch Nails Song, Hurt. Okay. It was absolutely amazing. But we never cleared the music. We never used it, and it was never shown anywhere. It was submitted to the Key Art Awards, and it won Best of Show. Wow. And one other story, and this is it.

Speaker 4 (46:03):

Yeah.

Tony Sella (46:04):

The greatest trailer never finished was the trailer on a movie called Kingdom of Heaven.

Kevin Goetz (46:09):

Ridley Scott.

Tony Sella (46:10):

Nothing tested above a 40. There was a lot going on in the world with the subject matter.

Kevin Goetz (46:15):

It was bad timing.

Tony Sella (46:16):

It was bad timing.

Kevin Goetz (46:18):

I recall that's when the towers came down.

Tony Sella (46:20):

There was bad things going on in the Middle East. And anyway, we had this idea in the middle of the night, let's cut it to Stairway to Heaven. And we cut the trailer to the entire piece of Stairway to Heaven. We tested it, and they went from 43 to like all eighties.

Kevin Goetz (46:36):

I was there with you there.

Tony Sella (46:38):

And we were ready…

Kevin Goetz (46:39):

You remember we did, we tested it at first in the focus group rooms and people were like, wow.

*Tony Sella (46:44):

Yeah. And then what happened is, is we had to clear the music. They had never licensed that song ever. It was the holy grail and they would never license it. So I implored Sir Ridley Scott to call Sir Jimmy Page and get the music. And we did.

Kevin Goetz (47:02):

Oh, listen to this, oh my God.

Tony Sella (47:03):

And then the band got in a fight over it, and we had just finished mixing it.

Kevin Goetz (47:06):

This is a crime.

Tony Sella (47:07):

Ready to print the trailer, and we lost the music. We couldn't do it. So that's the greatest trailer never finished.

Kevin Goetz (47:14):

I mean, to get a 40-point jump and then to be disappointed, have the rug pulled out because you couldn't get the clearance. My god, Tony, I remember that. What a heartbreak.

Tony Sella (47:24):

Yeah. And the magic of the business are these editors because editing is a language and it's like writing with light.

Kevin Goetz (47:33):

I agree with you. Tony Sella, what can I say? Man, I adore you. I wanna thank you for your tremendous contributions to our business. You are a singular human and creative beyond belief. Thank you so much for being here today.

Tony Sella (47:50):

Thank you very much. You know, I couldn't have done it alone. I've worked with the most amazing filmmakers and talent. It's been a really great ride. I consider myself the luckiest. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Goetz (48:01):

To our listeners, I hope you enjoyed our interview today. I encourage you to watch many of the films discussed. For more filmmaking and audience testing stories, I invite you to check out my book, Audienceology, at Amazon or through my website at KevinGoetz360.com. You can also follow me on my social media. Next time on Don't Kill the Messenger, I'll welcome veteran literary agent and manager, and former studio executive, Mike Marcus. Until then, I'm Kevin Goetz, and to you, our listeners, I appreciate you being part of the movie-making process. Your opinions matter.

Host: Kevin Goetz
Guest: Tony Sella
Producer: Kari Campano
Writers: Kevin Goetz, Darlene Hayman, and Kari Campano
Audio Engineer: Gary Forbes (DG Entertainment)