Saleable Scripts

A story in today's New York Times, titled 'Product placement for the whole family', centres on the new movie Herbie: Fully Loaded, which is indeed loaded - with logos. The article reminds us that scripts are often altered to accommodate the wishes of companies whose brands are booked to appear on screen (in this case, GM and Goodyear). Further, it rightly explains that some placements are the result of having a common parent company: ESPN, which appears prominently, "happens to be owned by the studio's parent, the Walt Disney Company."

The industry sources that are wheeled out to defend the practice of product placement claim, predictably, that the onslaught of logos in Herbie: Fully Loaded is simply about realism. This is, in general terms, a tired and altogether hollow claim, coming from people who are actually in the business of escapism. The excuse here is that the action in this film is embedded in the world of NASCAR and, as we all know, NASCAR itself often appears to be nothing more than the mobile progeny of Times Square, the Ginza, and Piccadilly Circus.

But wait: it is two of the writers on Herbie: Fully Loaded who make this claim for realism ("people who have problems with the [on-screen] 'Herbie' promotions don't understand Nascar") and it these same two writers (Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant) who "came up with the idea of setting the long-delayed 'Herbie' project in the Nascar milieu." So, who's fooling who? Might it be possible - even probable - that the project got the greenlight precisely because the writers found a 'realistic' way to turn it into a placement bonanza? Rest assured they worked hard for their money; as Lennon says: "There's so much product placement in the film that it's really hard to sneak it by."