Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Mooninites coming to Hub: Theaters ‘toon’ out Tom’s plea
By Tenley Woodman
Boston Herald Features Reporter
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Score one for the Mooninites.
The “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie behind January’s marketing-stunt-turned-bomb-scare opens in Boston Friday (the 13th, no less) despite Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s plea to local theaters not to screen it “out of respect to the people of Boston.”
No such luck. “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters” opens Friday on two screens: AMC Boston Common and Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge. Elizabeth Wolfe, vice president of publicity for First Look Pictures, said the film’s distributor had no trouble getting Boston theaters to show it.
As of press time, the mayor’s office had no comment.
Boston came to a near standstill Jan. 31 when more than three dozen battery-powered light boards, some with dangling wires, were discovered around the city. Public safety officials launched an all-out terror response, only to discover the boards depicted the cartoon character Mooninite from “ATHF,” a cult-hit series on Cartoon Network.
The two men who posted the boards still face felony hoax charges; Cartoon Network’s parent company, Turner Broadcasting, and its marketing firm agreed to pay $2 million in restitution to city and state agencies that responded to the terror alert.
With the movie opening looming, the official response from those agencies - including the Massachusetts State Police, Boston Police Department and the attorney general’s office - was “no comment.”
Some pop-culture observers think that’s the most effective tactic.
“I think the worst thing the mayor can do it at this point is to give it legs that it doesn’t already have,” said Doug Quintal, undergraduate program director and executive in residence for the department of marketing communication at Emerson College. “If it was banned in Boston it would get bigger numbers nationally because it would be front-page news.”
January’s brouhaha may spark greater turnout from the film’s target audience, said Sasha Norkin, professor of broadcast journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication.
“I think too much was made of it and Turner stepped up and paid their end of it,” said “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” fan Jeff Burns, 28, of Brighton. “I’m going to go see it anyways.”