A New Film Trailer Accidentally Credited a Review to Roger Ebert
So this probably isn’t the way IFC Films wanted this conversation to go. Earlier this week, the studio released the above first trailer for Band Aid, a new comedy starring Adam Pally, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Fred Armisen about a struggling couple who start a band to work through some of their marriage issues. It’s a perfectly fine trailer; Pally and Lister-Jones seem to have a lot of chemistry, Armisen is sufficiently wacky, and the whole thing suggests a light indie for those tired of superheroes come June.
Only, there’s one small problem. As First Showing’s Alex Billington pointed out on social media, IFC Films used a questionable pull quote in its trailer, attributing a comment by RogerEbert.com staff writer Brian Tallerico to, well, the late, great Roger Ebert himself. Here’s the quote in case you missed it the first time around:
And here’s an example of how to correctly acknowledge the site, courtesy of last month’s trailer for Whose Streets?:
This difference is highlighted best by the RogerEbert.com Twitter account, which describes their talented staff of writers as “preserving and extending the legacy of Roger Ebert, film critic since time immemorial.” Attributing the review to Roger Ebert himself is not only disrespectful to the critic’s memory, but it also steps on the work that Tallerico and company due to keep Ebert’s spirit alive through thoughtful criticism. Granted, I have a feeling that Ebert himself would find this whole thing more than a little amusing — and probably make a crack about it being the worst he’s even been misquoted in a trailer to date — but these things matter. No doubt IFC Films will pull the trailer pretty quickly and apologize privately, making this more of a comedic footnote in the strange culture of movie trailers, but it’s a pretty glaring mistake for all involved.