Clarifications and Disclaimers

Yes, you are still in the Moviedozer.com Screening Room. Yes, the topic of this commentary is indeed the Disney cable movie High School Musical and it’s recent regurgitation, High School Musical 2. And yes, we’re slightly embarrassed to be diving into the shallow end of the pool in terms of our usual subject matter. However, the focus of Moviedozer has always been to take a hard and often impolite (but no less honest) look at the way movies and their ancillary products are marketed and sold to a (sometimes, but hardly always) unsuspecting audience. So, though High School Musical, it’s sequel and it’s sequels-in-waiting, seem to be shallow, mindless entertainment for kids too young to matter (and there are no kids too young to market to), to ignore their impact on the entertainment industry, and specifically movie production, would be counter to why we’re here.

If you’re thinking that it’s all still too silly, we offer this - with the original High School Musical, Disney, surprising even themselves, tripped over the launch button for a billion dollar piece of business. Likely when it’s all said and done, that number may be eclipsed several times over. That’s a number stock holders don’t ignore. I promise you, neither will any other movie studio in Hollywood.

Studios are nothing if they don’t follow trends.

The appeal of a teen musicals is certainly nothing new. There’s a decades long list of younger generations finding musical touchstones and teen heartthrobs at the movies. In the fifties to the early sixties, Elvis musicals were so much the rage that Elvis’ Colonel Parker was wheeling and dealing the King into such a straight-jacketed stereotype, that it likely changed the future history of everything that would be Elvis in his later career. The Beatles, after A Hard Day’s Night and Help, became so wary of playing light musicals for laughs that they traded celluloid success for artist integrity, and in that moment likely changed every image of their later history as well.

Then came Grease. Olivia Newton John and John Travolta captured lighting in a bottle when Randall Kleiser directed Paramount’s take on the Broadway musical, and made it the People’s Choice award winner for Best Movie Musical in 1979. Grease, set at California’s fictitious Rydell High, follows a now famous group of characters through their senior year from the first day back from vacation to the graduating day’s summer carnival. A young Australian exchange student (Newton-John) meets a “greaser” stud, (Travolta) over summer vacation with no idea that they are about to be reunited at Rydell. Just a bit less than 30 years later, a cute book-worm brainiac  (Disney discovery Vanessa Hudgins) meets a charming, polite and clean cut jock (bona fide teen-age idol Zac Efron) on vacation with no idea that due to a job transfer for the Braniac’s mom, they are about to be reunited at East High. A little familiar, but there you have the start of High School Musical.

It would be fair to say that High School Musical follows Disney’s formulas for teen flicks more than anyone else's. (For anyone who remembers, it’s almost impossible to watch Vanessa Anne Hudgens without thinking of Walt’s own protege, Annette Funicello, a definite compliment to Ms. Hudgens.) With a nod to Frankie and Annette’s Beach movies, Disney is clearly on very comfortable and satisfyingly familiar ground, sand, classrooms - whatever. Take a look at the students of East High while hanging by their lockers or choosing up tables in the lunchroom then go flip on a DVD of Annette in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones or Kurt Russell (a teen heartthrob in his own right during his Disney Studio days) in Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, The Computer Wears Tennis Shoes or The Strongest Man in the World, and the elements, less the choreography, are all there. In fact, the innocence and shenanigans seem almost interchangeable.

So what’s different about High School Musical and why is it even something we’re talking about? Simple. Though there will be audiences watching DVD’s and re-releases of Elvis, the Beatles and Grease for as long as anyone can project, High School Musical, a free-TV Disney Channel Original Movie, just getting to it’s first sequel, is already a billion dollar franchise! Stop and take a breath. If you were in the halls of Disney’s television development wing, you’d smell money. That smell has been drifting all over the Disney Burbank campus, and while it was immediately boxed up and sent over to merchandising, the smell is now clearly in the air at Disney Theatrical Productions, Disney music, Disney concert productions and Walt Disney Pictures. It’s even (rumor has it) drifted over to whoever it is that mounts Disney ice show tours.

Go to see Hairspray this summer? That was High School Muscial’s Zac Efron as Link Larkin, the singing and dancing heartthrob of the “Corny Collins Show”. Remember Kevin Bacon as the “gotta dance” Ren McCormack who saves the town from a dancing ban just in time for the High School prom in Paramount’s Footloose. Well, if the talks continue, it’s likely the remake is just a contract signing away, that is if Zac Efron can find time in the midst of filming High School Musical 3. And it may be High School Musical 3 (or possibly 4) that will have the franchise hitting it’s peak. That’s when the marketing hype will kick into overdrive and kick the mega-successful movie productions into full world-wide theatrical release. (Rumors are flying that the big screen treatment may have the teen cast stuck in a haunted House. This is feeling more like 1965 all the time.) Examining the product potential of High School Musical is a little like writing down the practical uses of duct tape, once you’re on the second or third page you’d be thinking about buying stock in the stuff. A point Disney has most definitely not missed.

What’s in a franchise?

In the world of studio execs trying to fill annual release schedules, particularly summer release schedules, having a film franchise to fall back on every year or so is as close to money in the bank as the movie business gets. When you see the word franchise, think sequel, think built-in audiences and opening weekend projections. Everyone is happier when they think they can count on “X” amount of ticket sales as a given.

Perhaps the happiest place to be is when the first sequel hits and the success not only sustains itself from round one, but indicates growing popularity. Just ask J.K. Rowlings what it felt like when Harry Potter’s second year at Hogwarts went golden. It’s that moment of knowing something magical has clicked. The franchise establishes and all that remains is for the producers (and in movies, unlike books, that can be a long list) to keep faith with the original and not become complacent or over confident in their audience expectations. Interestingly, Disney has a bit of a spotty track record for maintaining the integrity of an original by following it with less creative and more tiring sequels. With that as a tendency, the best guarantees can feel like no guarantee at all. For High School Musical, the all important second movie is made, shown and already piling up encores. So far, the news is good, for the studio and for the original fans of the first film.

Hard assets. Bankable stars from fresh faces.

So there’s Troy and Gabriella (that’s Danny and Sandy to the Grease generation) and Sharpay and Ryan (Rizzo and Kenickie?), well you get the idea. Though Grease applied some true star power (young star power, but established), Disney nails a business they have gotten extraordinarily good at - casting fresh, young faces that can explode with dance and voice talent while shimmering with so much charm you could turn the lights down on the set. The history of finding raw kid talent and squeezing the first five or six years worth of teen charisma into it’s company bank accounts has set Disney apart from every other studio in business. The nearest any movie franchise has come to duplicating Disney’s uncanny knack for discovering kid charm would have to be Warner Bros. Harry Potter films which benefitted from absolutely perfect, spot on casting of every child lead in the stories. While Warner Bros. nailed those roles with magical results, Disney seems able to see into the future when it comes to the 8 to 14 set taking to a dance floor or a microphone. The alumni who’s who, spawned from the Disney Channel, already includes the likes of Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, with a current crop of young talent that suggests Disney seems to have cultivated this skill from a decades long history of working with child actors like Kurt Russell, Haley Mills, Tommy Kirk and the ever endearing Annette.

Talent + execution = product(s).

The “product” that is High School Musical works. Period.

It’s working for kids from almost every age range, both male and female. But it’s not just about kids. Many adults have found a sweet brand of nostalgia in the silly, school crush behavior and Disney is no slouch at marketing nostalgia. Some of the adults I interviewed in prepping this article admitted to watching and laughing along, though perhaps with a twinge of embarrassment. For most of the adults that owned-up, the films seem just a bit of a guilty pleasure. And don’t discount the fact that the Disney brand remains a strong homing signal for the generations that date back to watching Walt sitting on the corner of his desk on Sunday nights and for all of us (and there are tens of millions each year) who still find a place on our credit card statements for Disney theme-park vacations. About the only audience alienated are the too-cool older teens and the twenty to thirty somethings who believe they’ve passed by finding interest in anything with the words “high school” branded on them. But Disney hasn’t lost that entire audience either. If you have kids, you’ll likely become a customer of some element of these movies. If you don’t yet, but are planning to start a family, let me remind you that the marketing cycle for Disney has historically refreshed every 7 years and there doesn’t seem to be a reason why these films won’t follow suit.

One last note on longevity, what may seem corny today, seems like charming innocence in hindsight. The Disney brand is built on it and High School Musical won’t disappoint. Where there are adult undercurrents all over Grease, there aren’t any here. You may have imagined a bit more going on with the romance flourishing in the halls of East High, but go back and check - Troy and Gabriella’s first kiss doesn’t even come ‘til the finale of movie 2. These films are about as innocent as Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney or Dagwood & Blondie. I know that’s going back a bit, but that’s the point. Unless you consider Lady and Tramp sharing a strand of spaghetti risqué, you couldn’t ask for a more innocent story set in a 2007 high school.

Been wondering why it’s the ‘tweeners who have really become obsessed here? It’s because it’s all within their own reach and set in their own world. The boys and girls are cute, they’re all talented in their own way and they all have dreams of either winning the state championship or becoming the next American Idol.

Graduating class.

High School Musical has of course, spawned marketing opportunities for Disney from back-packs to school clothes, from music to music players, from sing-a-long DVDs to a live concert tour. Long after you’ve exhausted yourself from thinking about that duct tape, Disney will still be plotting another marketing assault starring their latest hot property.

But if it were just that easy to mint movie money, well, they wouldn’t have made so many past mistakes. Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, launched a film franchise for Disney that also surprised executives and spun movie tickets into marketing gold. Four short years and two sequels down the road, the Pirates franchise has lost all it’s luster with the exception of having bragging rights to swashbuckling with one of the most unique pirate characterizations in Hollywood history (thank you Mr. Depp). But having followed inspiration with diminishing imagination and a near arrogance in moviemaking, that franchise has left it’s fans blindfolded and standing out on the plank.

If Pirates ever does live to see a fourth adventure, it will have to get back to it’s home port of Captain Jack “swashing his buckle” as only Captain Jack can. Though no one can dismiss a film that breaks 300 million at the box-office, having a franchise means having confidence in owning an audience. That means profit potential you can add to your annual stock projections. Losing that because of short-sighted and incompetent stewardship of a franchise is inexcusable corporate behavior. Disney seems well managed in locking in their cast, but overseeing a franchises’ creative side seems a lurking vulnerability. One can only guess at where the breakdowns are, and in the complex and collaborative medium of making movies, the weaknesses may surface in different places with each project. High School Musical would seem to be in good hands under the direction and choreography of Kenny Ortega and company, and Disney is likely well advised to leave their creative team intact. That all elusive but all important managing factor is where the voodoo lies and we can only continue to watch to know if they can keep getting the ingredients to blend.

I like High School Musical. I like the idea. I like the nostalgic bravado of just letting it be what it is. I like the clever, sometimes ingenious, dance numbers. I like what the first film had to say about fitting in and crossing lines. I like the commitment it took to keep it simple and innocent. I like that the kids who are devouring this stuff, are getting a strong message that the arts and academics are every bit on par with athletics. I’d like to think that High School Musical, and it’s wild popularity with the kids who are bubbling under invading tomorrow’s high schools, will help make school administrations across the country realize that cutting arts programs from their curriculum is unacceptable, and about to be even more unpopular. If that’s a naive take on the potential upside of these movies, isn’t taking a more innocent and simple point of view of life, the very reason these films exist? Looking back on movie musicals in general, I’d say it always has been.

High School Musical & High School Musical 2 were released in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Both films were directed by Kenny Ortega and written by Peter Barsocchini. They are Walt Disney Pictures releases for the Disney Channel. If you haven’t already been coerced by your kids to buy the DVDs, both films are receiving frequent airings (for free) on the Disney Channel. Walt Disney Productions also released The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975). Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl was released in 2003 under Walt Disney Pictures. Footloose was a Paramount Pictures release in 1984. The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night was a United Artists release in 1964 directed famously by Richard Lester. Grease is the word and was a Paramount Pictures release in 1978. (For the record, Grease 2 was released in 1982 and repeated no original principal actors but did reprise several of the popular supporting roles with original cast. It too was released by Paramount Pictures.) Hairspray was released this year from New Line Cinema.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007