The movie trailer that pissed off Meryl Streep: “It really made me mad”
Film trailers have had a strange shift in recent years, with the world of Hollywood marketing soaring to new levels of ridiculousness as entire plot lines are revealed before the movie is released and press teams find new ways of luring in audiences. Whether it be the studio’s collaboration with a popular doughnut brand for the release of A Complete Unknown or Netflix’s bizarre Duolingo partnership for the second season of Squid Game, film studios have taken to new methods of manipulation in order to drag in as many unsuspecting viewers as possible.
But the art of making good film trailers, in particular, has declined. It is rarely seen as a way to entice audiences but to trick them or reveal as much as possible so that nothing you see is a surprise. None other than Meryl Streep has taken issue with this, describing the often-misleading marketing campaigns and one film of hers that was painted in a false light.
Streep is one of the most accomplished actors of her generation, with each performance garnering new levels of admiration and sheer awe at her endless talent. Whether it be a leading or supporting role, each film she stars in is elevated to a new realm through her presence, adding a dimension of depth and magnitude to films such as Little Women, Manhattan, Kramer vs Kramer and Defending Your Life.
But after decades in the business, the actor has been witness to many waves of extreme changes and upheavals in the industry, whether it be the rise of the #MeToo movement, increased efforts to boost diversity or the parasitic presence of blockbuster films and Marvel-esque franchises. While these are all notable differences, Streep highlighted one change in the marketing of films after the release of her 1994 film, The River Wild.
Starring Streep and Kevin Bacon, the film is an unexpected addition to her filmography given that it is an action film following a couple on a white-water rafting holiday whose trip is ambushed by two dangerous men. When discussing the marketing campaign for the film, Streep revealed that the trailer especially annoyed her after they used a shot of her wielding a gun, despite the fact that it isn’t a violent film.
She expanded on this, saying, “It really made me mad. I’m always mad, you know, when they say they’re going to do one thing and they don’t really mean it. They’re just saying it to mollify the woman. And so they said, ‘Oh, it’s only two weeks. And we really can’t find any other close-up that’s as powerful in the whole movie.’ And so I objected to this being my Christmas gift to America, because they were just gonna run it for two weeks in the theatres at Christmas. Then they got such great response from the whole trailer that they decided to run it forever”.
Unfortunately for Streep, this version of the trailer was permanently used to promote the film, despite her qualms with how it misrepresented the story and offered and didn’t reflect the genre. But alas, it managed to bring audiences to the theatres so they could eventually make up their own mind about the tone of the film, even if they had slightly different ideas going into it.
