Nothin' But a Chihuahua and a Dream...

As people across the globe threaten bloody revolt over mere grains of rice and literally eat 'mud cakes' for sustenance, the Hollywood Dream Machine continues to find terribly clever ways to piss money into the ether.

Where does $200 million go?
$100 million?
$50 million?

All of these are obscene amounts of money. What's even more obscene is the unpublished, additional obscene amounts of money that are spent after all that money is spent to make the movie--they call it marketing.

A $200 million movie might incur marketing costs of an additional $100 million. The worse the movie is, the more money spent on marketing it. Although even your grandmother knows not to throw good money after bad, studios do not heed this time-tested advice. Do you think anybody thought Speed Racer was good? Trust me--nobody did. But that didn't stop them from blanketing every city in the country with billboards and bus stop advertisements, not to mention trailers on TV. Think that stuff comes cheap?

The latest and greatest example I can offer, from sources that shall remain nameless, involves the Disney movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

For those of you that are not 'hip,' I offer the following summary:

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a wealthy woman who lives in Beverly Hills. She owns a pampered chihuahua, voiced by Drew Barrymore. On a vacation to Mexico, this chihuahua gets lost and meets a Mexican chihuahua, voiced by George Lopez.
I assume they fall in love.

In addition to the predictable onslaught of web/TV trailers, merchandising tie-ins, billboards, etc, the Disney team has been doing some thinking outside the box. How far outside the box? Well, that's for you to judge.

The plan was to stage a 'Running of the Chihuahuas' on Rodeo Drive.

Get it? Chihuahuas instead of bulls; Beverly Hills instead of Pamplona.


Since chihuahuas are not too bright, don't tend to run around that much, and love to fight each other, the animal trainers--the same ones who worked on the film--advised the production team to train the chihuahuas on a course identical to the one they would eventually run on come event day.

The cost for 50 trained chihuahuas to run a 100ft. course?

$165,000

Add to that amount the money spent to build two identical tracks, crew salaries for production personnel, permits for street closure, lighting/video/sound equipment rental, security, trucking, parking, crew meals, carpeting, fences, banners, bathrooms, etc...and the cost of this promotional event would have easily run up to and beyond $350,000.

All to watch a bunch of chihuahuas run for 45 seconds.

Why?

Why not? It's cute! People will look at the photos online or in some stupid magazine and laugh and think to themselves, "Oh, I gotta take the kids to see that movie..."

So who's to blame?