Talk:Goldenrod (film)

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Canada: Cinema Low‑importance

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Production and distribution[edit]

Here's a source that should be useful:

Pill, Jaan - ‎Feb. 1977. "Feature distribution : all that glitters..." Cinema Canada 24-27 (interview with Len Herberman, president of Ambassador Film Distributors)

To launch an effective sales campaign usually takes a distributor a couple of months, and when there's no time and material for a campaign, the result is a box office disaster, even for a well-made picture. A case in point is the recent million-dollar Canadian fiasco entitled Goldenrod. Normally the distributor looks after the sales campaign for a film, but with the film being shot in Alberta, and be- cause of a deadline release date, it had been agreed that the producers would create the campaign for Goldenrod and submit it to Ambassador for approval. However, despite assurances from the producers during production, Herberman discovered, two weeks before release date, that nothing had been put together for a campaign. The campaign was thereupon dumped onto Ambassador, and given the circumstances, the sales effort bombed and so did the film. Its total Canadian gross office was less than $40,000.

"The picture deserved to do far better but it didn't have a chance. And the only reason it didn't have a chance is because of the producers. Not the distributor, not the director, not the production, not anything other than the producers, who couldn't even give us background material on the people in the picture."

Although controversy surrounded the production of Goldenrod, Cinema Canada has found no difference of opinion about the following facts: The project was sold to CBS for television. This sale was crucial, got the project going, and assured the financial participation of Film Funding, a group of Canadian investors, along with Talent Associates from the States. Harvey Hart, the director, and Ron Wisman, the editor, both withdrew from the film because the first edit was refused by the producers. Gerry Arbeid, Canadian producer, left the production as well, dissatisfied with the post-production decisions which were being made. Thousands of feet of excellent shots - vistas and long shots - were not used in the final edit. The final edit was tailored for television and not for theatrical exhibition. The producers did not furnish the distributor with the material promised for the promotional campaign. The publicity campaign for Goldenrod was extremely bad. Given the statistics of random chance, more Canadians should have gone into theatres showing Goldenrod than actually went. Famous Players re-released the film almost immediately, unable to accept the bad results of the first release. The results were just as bad the second time around. Ed.

ZarhanFastfire (talk) 03:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]