My big Italian movie: marketing Big Mamma’s Boy
Big Mamma’s Boy’s Matteo Bruno and Franco Di Chiera had the challenge of marketing a rom-com set in Melbourne’s Italian community two ways, to the cultural minority and the mass majority. Colin Delaney reports.
“For me it’s a romantic comedy and that’s it,” says Franco Di Chiera, director of Big Mamma’s Boy about an Italian-Australian career man by day, jazz singer by night who falls for a non-Italian girl, while still living with his mother.
Yet, despite the fact the film is a rom-com at heart, Di Chiera, producer Matteo Bruno and lead actor/writer Frank Lotito are well aware Big Mamma’s Boy could easily be passed off as another Australian ‘wog story’.
And what would be wrong with that? Comedies about the ‘wog’, be them Italian, Greek or any other wonderful ethnicity slapped with that all-encompassing title have been widely successful across multiple platforms: Acropolis Now and Fat Pizza on television; The Wog Boy films; Wogs Out of Work and Il Dago on the stage. And many of the actors are originally stand-up comedians.
“Comedy plays with stereotypes,” says Di Chiera, “There’s nothing wrong with that. But what is wrong is if all you see are those stereotypes. If you can also show people showing real emotion then they go beyond stereotypes and that’s what I’m hoping we’ve achieved, where audiences like the characters, think they’re funny but at the same time are emotionally touched by it at the end.
“I think the film plays with those stereotypes and turns them upside down. It’s not a ‘dumb wog’ story – the character is a lot more rounded and successful. I think it plays on those values that are entrenched in stereotypes but we take it further to show them as real people. That has potential not only to entertain but to help tear down those stereotypes we’ve seen in the past.”
“We’ve also got people with something to say that goes deeper than just being the funny man,” Di Chiera continues. “Osvaldo Maione who plays the Nonno character is symbolic of what’s happened in the industry in the past, which is people from a non-English speaking background weren’t really given a voice. So for most of the film he just comes out with one-liners, which are swear words but by the end of the film he comes out with a beautiful, impassioned speech. I remember having him in an interview for a documentary I made called Change of Face which challenged notions of Australian identity on the screen that was made for the Australian bi-centennial. At the time it generated the highest level of publicity for the SBS for a local production. In it he said, ‘for an actor like myself, from a non-English speaking background, it’s a bit like Madam Butterfly waiting for Pinkerton to come. By the time he shows up you’re already dead. Well the funny thing is, in this film, he doesn’t die, he has a voice and it shows the potential we can get from the range of talent we have in this country. Things have certainly got better but we still have a long way to go.”
We’re still stuck in the crossroads. From a promotional standpoint, there are two markets that need to be tapped differently – as what might work for the Italian and Greek community may not work for the wider Australian audience.
Grassroots engagement
Taking a two-pronged approach, Bruno and Lotito collaborated with distributors Madman Entertainment to tailor each market as necessary.
For the Italian and Greek community, Bruno says “Frank is a stand up comedian and he’s reaching that market in his routine and we’ve marketed to them in the past. Before signing on with Madman we’d already done test screenings of up to 3-400 people at a time.”
“We know who we’re targeting the 30-plus female because she runs the household. It is a family film. It’s rated PG so we’re targeting an audience over generations. I co-wrote the film with Frank, writing gags that my parents would laugh at, so that they’d tell their kids, and they’d take their kids to see it.
“Also, Joe Avati is the associate producer so he and George Kapiniaris are promoting the film through Il Dago, being introduced as ‘from the film Big Mamma’s Boy’ and we’re handing out flyers, it’s using a grassroots system. Also Frank is doing appearances at Italian and Greek social clubs.”
As supportive as the community is however, Di Chiera says: “They won’t go if it’s not any good – it can be pretty tough to drag those people in. There’s no denying the self-affirmation aspects of those sorts of works play a role, especially when there has been a traditional accent on screen. I suppose it comes down to entertainment and truth. If it feels real enough, that they can identify with it and own it and it affirms their life in a really positive way then they will want to share that experience. I think that has a lot to do with it. But the success of Big Mamma’s Boy doesn’t ride on the success of the Italian community. It has quite a few Greek actors, but doesn’t rely on that community either. It can kick start it but success will depend on a general audience attending. When you think of something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it’s the perfect example of that happening.”
Billboards and test audiences
Outside of the Italian and Greek communities, Bruno says: “Although we can identify the market, the tough part is getting them to pay. We’ve employed a more mainstream approach. We’ve got some big billboards in Melbourne, in Preston, Collingwood, Footscray, and Carlton, duplicated in Sydney along Parramatta road and in bus shelters as well as a targeted radio campaign in Sydney and Melbourne. This is supplementary to what Madman is doing with print.”
There’s no diluting the Italian-ness of the film as that’s a large part of its appeal, says Bruno. “We made a decision in terms of key art and trailer in how we’d take it. We see it as ‘authentically Italian’ but we have Holly Valance so there’s crossover there as well as other names that are non-ethnic, while still keeping in mind our key audience, and we stay true to that.”
“We’ve discovered through the test audience that it appeals to a range of people, the crossover rate is pretty much 100percent so we’re not being specific to Italians and Greeks – everyone knows an overbearing mother.”
Breaking it down, Bruno adds: “We know Nonno is a hit, so he features in the trailer. We know Pia Miller is a good draw card so she’s been featured in our promotion, likewise Costas Kilias. And we have the theme of food and family, that’s opened up doors to promotional partners. There’s nothing negative in the film itself so we’ve enjoyed good relationships with sponsors. You’ll see there are food suppliers and other Italian brands as cash or inkind supporters who through their outlets are helping push the back end as well. That’s one of the benefits of marketing a film to this audience, you’ve got companies and brands with a large and loyal database that can access a large audience which is kind of direct marketing and positive recommendation.”
A touch of classic Hollywood
“When you talk about a romantic comedy that is set in an English-speaking background do you focus on the fact it’s English speaking? No you don’t, it’s about the romance. So from my point of view, that’s the critical thing and I think it works,” says Di Chiera. refocusing. But if at its heart it’s an Australian romantic comedy, will people go see it?
Di Chiera is confident. “Interestingly when we were making the film a lot of people said: ‘That’s great – you don’t see a lot of rom-coms’. And people within the industry, distributors and so forth, have intonated that maybe we don’t have enough diversified genres on the Australian screen including things like romantic comedies. That might explain why, in the past, a lot of Australian films that haven’t done very well, because they haven’t had appeal to a general audience in terms of being a genre film that really entertains.
“We’ve done it in other genre films, like Wolf Creek, I’m not denying we don’t have that diversity of genres but certainly there has been what seems to be a noticeable absence of romantic comedies.
“There’s been failures in the past,” says Bruno. “We could have played for laughs but the love interest was a good balance. The romance was something we wanted to keep in.”
If anyone can resurrect the romantic comedy and a touch of classic Hollywood it’s sure to be a jazz singing lead actor of Italian descent named Frank.
“We didn’t try to make a Hollywood film, we just tried to make a good romantic comedy, but if you do look at those romantic comedies from the 50s, they are memorable, they are entertaining, they are suitable for children and older people and they appeal to a wide audience. But we didn’t set out to make a commercial film, we followed our passions just like everybody else,” says Di Chiera.
“I’ve always loved Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies, with music and wonderful humour and wonderful style, design-wise, and at the same time I love My Big Fat Greek Wedding so I hope those elements have rubbed off to be a good romantic comedy.”
Big Mamma’s Boy is in cinemas now.
