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Hot Docs - Booing Big Business

Posted by Matthew / May 5, 2006

15 Comments

caddy06.05.05
Pre-show announcements are made at the latest Hot Doc presentation. The lights dim. The opening Hot Doc animated sequence plays. Cut to...Models twirling on a catwalk. The onscreen audience, rich and bored, perks up at a new arrival rising up out of a dark pool. Water glistens and sheens off of slick curves. The new Cadillac is here! Hurrah!

And the real-life audience erupts into a chorus of hisses and boos. Others take it up and the house goes wild with enthusiastic jeering mixed with clapping and laughter. This same ritual has happened at every Hot Doc film I've attended and I look forward to it continuing over this last weekend of the festival. It's a great way to begin a film - presenting an audible middle finger in protest of the practice of corporate commercials preceding documentaries (the subjects of which often decry the big-business monster).

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ramanan / May 5, 2006 at 01:47 pm
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Yes, lets give the finger to Cadillac for helping to fund the festival. The government isn't helping to support the arts, so lets bitch at those companies that make the effort. I also think Cadillac were stupid to advertise at the festival the way they did, but booing them for doing so is equally stupid -- childish at the very least.
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Christine / May 5, 2006 at 01:55 pm
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I actually chuckled. I didn't mind the hissing or the booing, because I do think it sends the message far more clearly and directly from the audience that they're targetting to.

I think Cadillac was more stupid in not understanding its audience. - I mean, the car commerical could've worked, if it was executed properly ... models on a catwalk, for a documentary film festival ?... I don't think so.
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Michael / May 5, 2006 at 02:05 pm
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Cadillac should have done what sponsors do for the TIFF. That is, make an ad tailored to the event and the audience. This would cost more, but would probably garner fewer boos.
But people should keep in mind that the ads at a festival are very different from the hated ads at regular movies. The festival ads are sponsoring films that will unlikely see a wide release. The ads at regular movies are taking advantage of a captive audience who have paid to see film, not tv.
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ramanan / May 5, 2006 at 02:24 pm
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"Cadillac should have done what sponsors do for the TIFF. That is, make an ad tailored to the event and the audience. This would cost more, but would probably garner fewer boos."

I think that would have been the smart thing to do. My girlfriend informed me the ads aren't even new, they are some old recycled ad. I think if the ad was just the black screen with text saying "Cadillac proudly supports...." people wouldn't have booed. No one has booed during the History Channel / Alliance Atlantis advert, I am guessing because they just plaster their logo to the end of a commercial asking people to vote for the film they like.
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Rick / May 5, 2006 at 03:17 pm
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I think the problem is elevated by the fact that it's an Escalade they are advertising. Obviously trying to sell a luxury SUV to the audiences at Hotdocs was a poorly thought out idea. Selling a fuel efficient car would likely not have received very much attention (although I think any car that burns oil would have been boo'd at Oilcrash).

Personally I just turn my eyes away and refuse to watch the ad in my own form of personal silent protest, while contemplating how unfortunate it is that the organizers of Hotdocs are forced to play something like this to pay for the festival despite that I'm sure they'd rather have it any other way.
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Michael / May 5, 2006 at 04:11 pm
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It sounds like it is the ad Cadillac premiered during this year's Superbowl. Hotdocs is essentially the same audience, no?
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Gloria / May 6, 2006 at 12:28 pm
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Not sure what audience you're thinking of, Michael. No doubt there are lots of people who attend both, but to say both audiences are the same seems a rather random assumption to me.
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Michael / May 6, 2006 at 06:45 pm
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Ah, just trying lighten the sometimes way too serious blogoverse.
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matthew / May 7, 2006 at 01:54 am
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Was at the "evening with Herzog" tonight. No ads for the German maestro.
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Palmerston / May 7, 2006 at 06:56 pm
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HotDocs was a perfectly fine festival before they started running SUV ads. People booed at every single movie. It was great.
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Matt / May 8, 2006 at 10:06 am
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At the first screening I attended, there was a low-level hiss when the Caddy ad came on. At the most recent, the disgruntlement had become a full-on corporate shout-out with obscenities, middle fingers, and a whole lot of howling. Where on earth did this come from, and more importantly, where are these people during TIFF, when corporate sponsorship eats ten or fifteen minutes of our time at every single screening? Better yet, why are they not booing the ten minute run of ads that precedes every theatrical film in current release, forcing us to pay for the privelege of watching Stella Artois ads that are a genuine offense upon human consciousness?
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real / May 8, 2006 at 07:25 pm
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somewhere in the corridors sits an asian engineer who has been shunned for proposing fuel efficient cars.

a few floors above sits a white fat cat (or nephew thereof) earning 5 times as much as said asian engineer, who got a bonus for recommending this hotdocs ad campaign. what recall?
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x_the_x / May 10, 2006 at 12:50 pm
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real: please share more hackneyed and racist stereotypes. It really butresses your point about the Cadillac ad. Perhaps all that documentary watching has left you yearning for fiction.


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Matthew / May 10, 2006 at 08:04 pm
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Ha-ha! X, you slay me. Are you trolling every posting on this blog out of sheer boredom or genuine interest in the topics?
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x_the_x / May 11, 2006 at 03:41 pm
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I operate on the same mix of sheer boredom and genuine interest as the rest.

Not "trolling", though I forgive the assumption as I only tend to comment when the hypocracy becomes breattaking such as the above post decrying advertising-sponsored arts on an advertising-supported, franchise blog). The whole thing is risible.

I will endeavour to make my next post complimentary.

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