Michel Gondry is one of my favorite directors, made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (loved it, genius) and Science of Sleep (liked it, very sweet) and, most recently, and a movie I just watch on PPV last night, Be Kind Rewind (rough start, a bit sentimental). The story of Be Kind Rewind, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is about a flailing local video rental shop where all the tapes have been erased and in order to keep making money Jack Black and Mos Def remake all the movies. Their remakes are of course more interesting and popular than the originals and they save the store from closing its doors.

Okay, decent premise, and the movie was okay but all I really wanted to do was see the movies that Jack Black and Mos Def had made. Remakes of Ghostbusters, Lion King, Men in Black. Where are these movies? Of course I was hoping they would be on the website but instead there was a too-cool-for-school site about erasing the internet. Hrmpf. I then went on YouTube and found a branded site built so that everyone else can make and post their own remade films. Yikes. I don’t want to watch some idiots’ remake of No Country for Old Men, I really just want to see Jack Black doing Bill Murray.

This made me think about film marketing. Why wouldn’t Michel Gondry post all the remade films online before Be Kind Rewind was even released? It would have created significant buzz. I would have sent a Ghostbusters film with Jack and Mos to all my friends asking if this was for real. It would have made me want to see the film. He should have taken a lesson from The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and used the web to do all the marketing be pre-releasing all remakes, ahead of time, untethered. It certainly would have done more than $4MM on opening weekend (and $12MM overall). And, more importantly, I wouldn’t have to wait for the DVD.