A Lot Of Midgets Tend To Kill Themselves

I want to write and publish this post to get some things off my chest, to have said it and then leave it alone.

In all honesty these things need to be said, and they are being said by different individuals out there, but I felt that since this is the In Bruges Fansite it deserved a spot on here, too. This site is for people who enjoyed In Bruges, and it doesn't publish negative opinions on the film, the crew or the cast. But in my eyes, Focus Features/Universal has nothing to do with all that. They had a job of marketing and supporting this film after they chose to invest in it, and they failed royally. I think this needs to be said for those who supported In Bruges and felt left out during the releasing process, it needs to be said for those who are hoping for big awards, and it needs to be said most of all for those artistically involved in making In Bruges, though they are surely aware of what happened. It isn't my place, nor is it the end of the world, but it sure is a shame. I will continually show by linking that these opinions are shared and founded.

Quote from the Martin McDonagh forum on IMDb:
"Small compensation for being dumped on by Focus. Otherwise it would have had a bigger audience and serious Oscar chances. Bastards."

Throughout the process of releasing and promoting, it has become quite clear that Focus wasn't going to invest much in In Bruges anymore than they already did by granting the filmmaking budget. First the film was released in the dead moment of the film industry [source] - too late for the 2008 award season, too early for the 2009 award season. Focus Features had no reason to do this, since the editing was long done and they knew Martin McDonagh's cinematic work had previously won him an Oscar. They simply didn't care about the reception of the film.

UNITED STATES RELEASE

Consequently, they gave the US the prime release, way ahead of any of the countries involved in the producing and making of the film - way ahead of the European audience, which you'd think would receive the film more enthusiastically. In Bruges successfully opened the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it was received with praise from audiences and critics - it was a promising pre-screening to the US release, but nonetheless when In Bruges was released in America on 8 February 2008, it opened in only 28 theatres. Let me repeat that. Twenty-eight theatres across the United States. There's more states than theatres where it played. The maximum amount of US theatres it played in was 232, which is an extremely low number.

Now here's the catch - subsequently they barely marketed In Bruges in the States. You have an Oscar winning director, Colin Farrell whose name everyone knows, Brendan Gleeson who has been in a large number of big films, Ralph Fiennes who is a respected actor with two previous Academy Award nominations, a highly successful Sundance opening screening... and all you market is put up the posters here and there? The trailer wasn't distributed as widely as it could have, and the only other promotional activity was a contest on Facebook of which the winners never received their prizes after being set up to promote In Bruges to win something. Plenty of US theatre-goers were actually awaiting to see In Bruges; because they loved Martin McDonagh's work, because they were simply cinematic fanatics, because they were Colin Farrell or Ralph Fiennes or Brendan Gleeson fans - and many of these fans never had the chance to see In Bruges in the theatre because they would have to drive to the theatre for over five hours.

In these circumstances, In Bruges made a "mere" $8million in the United States. This could have been at the very least doubled.

EUROPEAN RELEASE

After watching the States go first, European fans and audiences were still to wait on confirmation of their release dates. After Focus Features changed the release date for many European countries more than twice, the final release dates were established, and it became clear that there would be no European premiere besides the Dublin Film Festival. Which is rediculous, because if In Bruges were to make the largest profits anywhere, it would be in Europe, and Europe really is bigger than Ireland. Nonetheless Sundance, the New York premiere and the Dublin Film Festival were the only promotional events that ever took place.

There had been talk about a premiere in Bruges, and I've had my reasons to believe that the cast and director were all very willing to go along with this plan. This premiere in Bruges was supposed to take place in March 2008. When Focus Features finally confirmed all the release dates, it turned out that Belgium was the last country on the release list, having to wait for the end of June after everyone else had already gotten a release. Universal Pictures stated to me personally, that the reason for this was "scheduling conflict" where there was no room in the theatres to release In Bruges earlier. I suppose March-June 2008 had been booked full since April 2007?

All the Brugians I have spoken to since the filming have been highly amused by In Bruges, and I've not spoken to a single Belgian who was insulted by the jokes in the film. I have spoken to Brugians who were insulted by being passed like that by Focus Features, after they'd happily accomodated the filming. Yes, the mayor may have been primarily concerned with advertising Bruges in the cinemas, but the people who lived in Bruges were there when everything was filmed and felt involved and then spit out. That's just the way it is, sorry.

The European releases thus went by without premieres, and without any promotion. As an active cinema goer I never once saw a trailer to announce In Bruges' upcoming release, I never saw any promotion for it anywhere else. There were posters up in London for a while, there were also posters around the cinemas where In Bruges would play in other European countries, but it never went beyond a few posters.

 

OTHER RELEASES

In Bruges made its highest profit outside the US, which isn't difficult when you only play it in 232 US cinemas, and consider that the rest of the world alltogether is bigger than the US. New Zealand saw the release of In Bruges about a month ago, and there it has made the decent profit of $273,312, only slightly less than The Netherlands.

AWARD SEASON

I have black on white statements that there is no Oscar campaigning [source] for In Bruges (dispite its Golden Globe nominations), and that the members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG Awards) who picked the nominees were sent every single film except In Bruges and The Duchess. I am thereby lead to believe that Focus never intended to give In Bruges any award-season-push ("For Your Consideration"), and in fact In Bruges' involvement in the award season was purely initiated by the fact that British Independent Film Awards included it.

Award season has a pulse, and a big part of this pulse is campaigning. In Bruges beats on, on the sole strength of some people acknowledging its quality on their own, with zero campaigning. I agree with above quote from IMDb, stating that this film could have had serious Oscar chances. I sadly doubt that it will go beyond a Screenwriting nomination, which is good, but it could have all been so much better.

 

THE PRODUCTION ITSELF

I'd very much like to point towards the people who were involved in making In Bruges, as well. They have their opinions on Focus' way of handling some situations, too.

Carter Burwell is the composer responsible for the (brilliant) score/soundtrack of In Bruges. On his site he notes some curious facts about how Focus Features handled the In Bruges project. Read it first hand [here].

"An odd logistical wrinkle was the insistence by Focus Features, who were paying for the film, that they hear synth sketches of all the music before we record it. I'd never heard such a request before. Focus is the "boutique" division of Universal Studios, and they've made some claims in the past of protecting the filmmaker's vision, but in this case they apparently felt more protective of other things. I was bemused but didn't object to sending my sketches to Focus.
(...)
In the end Focus had only two notes that made it to me. One was that the opening cue be recorded as it had been originally written, dispensing with a darkening of tone that Martin had wanted. The other was that the last music in the picture, occuring after all the main characters are dead or dying, be more, shall we say, "optimistic". After due consideration Martin and I dismissed this as absurd."

CONCLUSION

Overall this essay has been completely useless, as it won't change the past or change anything for the future. I've felt that Focus Features has shown their "support" for their own investment in very strange ways, and surely once I've married and killed a rich man I will buy the company and change it all for the better - oh happily ever after. But I thought it'd all be important to note, in case anyone ever wondered why things went the way they went. I'm happy "In Bruges" was taken on, and the $15million budget is a nice gesture - but it's just strange to first find them so generous and then so enstranged from both their investment and its audience.