I’m steadfast in my blaming of both TiVo and my girlfriend for this, but I admit that I recently caught part of Oprah Winfrey’s show, I believe from May 14, with most of the cast of Hairspray. On it, Oprah indulged her longstanding crush on John Travolta by batting her lashes and goofily hoofing it with him, and there was a nice casting bit with Nikki Blonsky, who was plucked from ice cream shop obscurity to star in the film by director Adam Shankman.

As detailed here, from a peek at advance footage last month, the movie actually looks good, or at the very least of a piece and consistently energetic. What rankles, though, or at least stands out as ridiculous, was Travolta’s on-air assertion, when lobbed an obviously tipped-off Winfrey softball about its advance testing with audiences, that Hairspray was the “highest scoring movie in history.” Really?

Look, I can’t immediately summon to mind all the other examples, but in around 10 years of film reportage, I’ve heard this very statement about, no lie, probably 15 or so different movies, from producers, directors and stars alike. It always struck me as somewhat desperate — something to talk about it lieu of the actual content and artistry of the film. Distributor New Line is obviously enthusiastic about the finished product (you don’t trot out footage this far in advance if you’re not), but is pushing cotton, as it were, over the prospect of selling a grand-gesture musical to a summer audience conditioned to look for more spoon-fed explosions and thrills.

Ergo, this sort of attempt at pre-selling word-of-mouth. Travolta’s comment was partially qualified (as in prefaced by, “I think it was”) — cloaked in blithe, movie star-ese — but in my view it’s still a goddamned stupid thing to say. I get that this tack is a consequence of a world where weekend box office grosses get mainstream press coverage, but it’s cynical and it devalues, in ways both specific and less concrete, the creative and aesthetic achievements of films, even if one accepts the false supposition that such rendered statements are always true. Hairspray is currently set
for wide release on July 20. For more information, click here.