Audience-ology

How Moviegoers Shape the Films We Love

Kevin Goetz, Darlene Hayman

• Publisher: S&S/Simon Element
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781982186746
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982186784
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film Direction & Production

Discover the fascinating and secretive process of audience testing of Hollywood movies through these firsthand stories from famous filmmakers, studio heads, and stars.

Audience-ology takes you to one of the most unknown places in Hollywood—a place where famous directors are reduced to tears and multi-millionaire actors to fits of rage. A place where dreams are made and fortunes are lost. From “the best in the business” (Sacha Baron Cohen), this book is the chronicle of how real people have written and rewritten America’s cinematic masterpieces by showing up, watching a rough cut of a new film, and giving their unfettered opinions so that directors and studios can salvage their blunders, or better yet, turn their movies into all-time classics.

Each chapter informs an aspect or two of the test-screening process and then, through behind-the-scenes stories, illustrates how that particular aspect was carried out. Nicknamed “the doctor of audience-ology,” Kevin Goetz shares how he helped filmmakers and movie execs confront the misses and how he recommended ways to fix the blockbusters, as well as first-hand accounts from Ron Howard, Cameron Crowe, Ed Zwick, Renny Harlin, Jason Blum, and other Hollywood luminaries who brought you such films as La La Land, Chicago, Titanic, Wedding Crashers, Jaws, and Forrest Gump.

Audience-ology explores one of the most important (and most underrated) steps in the filmmaking process with enough humor, drama, and surprise to entertain those with only a spectator’s interest in film, offering us a new look at movie history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Finding My “And”
• Chapter 2: Locked Doors, Severed Heads, and the Early History of Test Screenings
• Chapter 3: The Lights in Minneapolis
• Chapter 4: The Girl in the Black Cocktail Dress
• Chapter 5: Know Thy Audience
• Chapter 6: From Straight-to-DVD to Five F*cking Sequels
• Chapter 7: Scores Settle Scores
• Chapter 8: When Bad Things Happen to Good Movies
• Chapter 9: It’s Like Seeing Your Lover Naked for the First Time
• Chapter 10: Spock, Laddie, and Lessons in Managing Highly Emotional Individuals
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Film Index
• Name Index
• Copyright