So it finally hits me just how much like movie marketing the presidential campaign now is, as the McCain team pretends that pregnancies and in-state investigations and a lack of vetting and the problems of an unknown candidate trying to be bait for disgruntled Hillary "a lifetime of being vetted" Clinton will all just go away by calling those who raise legitimate (and occasionally, illegitimate) concerns "sexists."

And critics who don't praise half-ass, unambitious work are "out of touch."

McCain's situation really does mirror Snakes On A Plane.

A little imagination please...

It's pre-summer and Snakes On McCain is scheduled for late summer. There aren't very high expectations. The genre's kinda played out and the budget was kept tight so that profit is pretty much guaranteed after a modest release.

But then... it turns out that the only movie opening against it is a Denzel Washington movie. Yeah, he's a movie star and everyone seems to love him, but there also seems to be a glass ceiling when it comes to his grosses.

The tracking shows that the race for opening weekend is a lot tighter than some expected... though if you look closely, the bigger movie markets are dominated by Denzel. Maybe people are sick of Denzel... after all, when his last movie opened, it beat the Meryl Streep film and the NYT didn't write about Denzel's hit, but about how movies weren't being made for or by women. (Oddly, when Denzel and Meryl teamed up, it wasn't so successful... that won't happen again.)

They know there is a limit to the number of people who will support Denzel and "the kind of star he is" but the hope from Denzel's camp is that in the way Bill Clinton went from being a Lee Majors candidate to Elvis once in office, Denzel will ascend to the Will Smith level once he is in office... uh, theaters.

So the studio starts to work to excite the McCain On A Plane base. They go and start spending money to re-shoot to add the kind of material that the base really loves. They encourage all kinds of talking points that may be utter bull, but sure get that base excited.

And then they add one more re-shoot... to add both Britney & Jamie Lyn Spears to the cast... because as successful women, they surely could capitalize on the sexism questions about Denzel. And heck, they are young and sexy, like Denzel!

But what they forget is that the base may be excited by the move to the edge and the addition of two popular women to the cast, but the audience that doesn't normally want to go see McCain On A Plane isn't going to be turned by that. In fact, they are likely to be turned off by the additions, which seem to be pandering... especially when the sisters keep ending up in the tabloids, whether for being pregnant as a teen or getting out of the car without the panties on... and how sexist are those paparazzi for taking those shots?!?!?!

But damned if the "studio" doesn't just keep selling the same line, no matter what the movie really is, no matter how tired the audience is getting of the same old stuff... they just keep selling... when bad stuff happens, they just keep moving forward. They have no choice. Once you commit to a strategy in marketing something with a limited window of opportunity, if you change direction with your pitch, you inevitably die. Movies can overcome all kinds of bad buzz... but they can't overcome a bad or inconsistent sales job.

And of course, the industry keeps thinking, "those guys might have something... Denzel might be vulnerable... people are suckers... the media is spending so much time promoting McCain On A Plane... maybe Britney Spears really is the same as Meryl Streep for audiences..."

And that great tag line... "Get those muthafucking liberals out of my muthafucking POW cell!" It's powerful stuff. And the studio doubled the ad budget.

The irony of all of this being that S.O.A.P. is remembered as a commercial disappointment, ticket buyers voting with their money, but the movie was not as bad as the excessive selling and fear of the showing the film suggested. Had they just stuck to what they had, not increased their budget, and rode the web buzz, the film would have been a relative success.

The McCain who actually was a maverick would have been a real possibility this year. But they just kept changing the formula and no matter how hard you try to sell New Coke as "better," people make up their mind for themselves... but that's another column.