BEHIND THE BALLS: BRADLEY JACKSON AND THE STORY OF BALLS OUT
(Balls Out, a.k.a. ‘Intramural’ 2014)
When I first started the Headless Women of Hollywood project in 2016, this was one of the first posters I saw.
Not to be confused with this poster for an entirely separate 2009 film “Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach” (no relation):
(First ever blind female tennis player to play in a bikini top! Historic.)
What struck me most about the Balls Out (2014) poster is that she is not only headless, she is practically synthetic.
(The two female stars are taken out of the trailer thumbnail and replaced with a butt — very cool!)
The movie stars Kate McKinnon in her first big screen appearance — and like in everything — she is a stand out star. It also hails Jay Pharoah, Beck Bennett, Nikki Reed and the lead male is Jake Lacy (now known for Carol, Obvious Child and more). None of the stars are shown on the cover. You would never in your wildest dreams guess that this is an indie sports satire containing no sex or nudity. You would assume this is some sort of American Pie meets Dodgeball — and with not much substance to it at all.
It’s a movie I would never see, and I am a sports film fanatic. (When I broke my arm as a kid, and didn’t become a Major League pitcher I was … devastated.)
CUT TO: 2018.
Headless Women of Hollywood goes viral again, this time being made into a Twitter Moment, and the writer/producer of Balls Out, Bradley Jackson, reaches out to me. (It really feels insane every time I have type out the words ‘Balls Out’ so I can only imagine how he must feel.)
I did want to hear it!
Originally titled “Intramural”, the movie itself is a well done spoof that parodies the structure and dramatics of all the classic sports movies, and it has an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Doing a little research, my friend Lyra found an interview Bradley did with Pajiba back in 2016 about the studio’s hijacking of his film. He says:
“We had really good reviews coming out of Tribeca, MGM came with an offer, and we were excited. Everything was looking good. We went through the normal process of getting everything together and all that good stuff. All I can really tell you is about six months after we knew we were going to be going with MGM — the lawyers do their things with the contracts, that always takes longer than it should, but that’s just how it happens — I remember I was on vacation with my family, I’d gotten really sick with a stomach virus and I got an email from one of my other producers on the project, and all it said was: “They’re changing the name to Balls Out.”
…
“[In terms of marketing,] we tried to argue that people are going to see a thumbnail of a girl’s butt with the title “Balls Out,” and if they’re going to watch it because of that, they’re going to think, “I’m going to see some sex scenes in this.” Well, there’s nothing. You see half of Jake Lacy’s butt. The people that will enjoy it won’t watch it because of the poster and the title, and the people that will enjoy it because of the poster and the title will get upset, because nothing in the marketing that they’re seeing is delivered.
There was no back and forth, no “Hey, we have these six poster options”? It was “This is what it is.”
“This is what it is.” Yeah. There was a little bit of a dialogue. I don’t want to paint them as monsters who didn’t return any emails or phone calls.” (http://www.pajiba.com/interview/the-strange-case-of-balls-out.php)
A true indie film at heart, Jackson said he’d been working on selling the script for nearly half a decade and he and friends even self-raised the initial funds through a Kickstarter campaign:
It’s so wild, because I’d been trying to get the script off the ground for like 4 years, then helped get the financing to get it made, got an amazing cast, got into a great festival, got great reviews (for a comedy haha) and then out of nowhere some random exec from the studio just tells us he’s decided to rename it because the title Intramural “just doesn’t pop”.
JUST. DOESN’T. POP. Can you imagine?
Pop what? Boners?
Bradley then shared with me the original poster for Intramural:
See, now that is a poster for a movie I would VERY likely see. And not one I would feel the need to disclaimer to my Mom before renting on her Amazon account.
(“How was the ‘balls movie’?” my Mom asked me the next time we talked.)
Jackson told me that his girlfriend at the time and Mom (at the time and probably still) were similarly not too pleased with the title and marketing approach adopted by the studio for mainstream release.
It ruined the release and we tried to fight them so hard on it but they’d already bought the movie. There’s no sex or nudity in the movie — we even begged them to include the Tribeca Film Festival logo on the new poster and they said… and I quote… “That implies the movie is clever, and clever doesn’t sell. You know what sells? Sex sells.”
That is one of the most repeated lines people have said in response to this project.
“Sex sells.” As if that instantly waves away any criticisms of HOW we are selling sex and who for.
“Sex sells”, sure, but what this project is meant to highlight and critique is the way in which female sexuality is consistently sold IN PARTS — decontextualized from their whole — and catered towards male desires rather than our own. And done so without a second thought.
But, “Clever doesn’t sell. Sex sells.” … that was a ‘wow’ — even for me.
What’s funny is that, “clever doesn’t sell, sex sells” seems to be one of the many accepted “truths” Hollywood studios just accept without looking deeper — no matter how many clever comedies DO sell. (“Black female leads don’t sell” “Chubby women don’t sell” “Women over 40 don’t sell” etc. are other examples of marketplace myths.)
Hollywood will go to the grave, and will even sometimes work against its own financial interests, fighting to maintain horny straight men as the only audience of concern — particularly in comedy.
Never would that particular studio exec consider that he might actually LOSE audience by making abundantly clear who this movie is — and isn’t — for. No thought to the fact that starved demographics, such as women who like sports films, might show up even more for a film that didn’t contain unnecessary sexism. No desire whatsoever to question or re-evaluate the current status quo.
It also seems to me that the studio didn’t believe a film centered around the stories of men could exist WITHOUT gratuitous female nudity or sexual exploitation — that a male sports comedy could be fundamentally grounded in anything OTHER than misogyny.
That is sad. And that is what many people are taught to believe. Even men, like Bradley, who try not to celebrate that type of masculinity, can end up having their work taken from them and twisted still to fit into the only form of masculinity the studios will accept.
As he put it:
“It just seemed so counterproductive — our movie is much more in line with Wet Hot American Summer or Dodgeball — movies that are mainly focused on silly comedy and have little to no gratuitous sex. But they market it to people who want that I guess…
So, you piss off the people who want a movie with T&A when you don’t deliver on it and then you alienate an audience who’d never watch a movie like that (and not knowing Kate Mckinnon etc., are in the movie.) but THEN — when they released the DVD — they changed the title back to Intramural (without telling us) so the cover of the DVD says ‘INTRAMURAL’. But when you put the DVD in the player and pull up the title menu it says ‘BALLS OUT’.”
…
Truly bonkers. And yet, at the same time, wholly consistent with an industry that so often seems disconnected from both its audiences and itself.
Here are some further questions I talked to Bradley about regarding his experience:
What were the reactions of the women in your life like to this change being forced upon you? (I know you said you had to explain to your Mom & GF.) Any reactions by the women (or men) working on or starring in the film when seeing the cover or hearing of the new title?
When I would talk about it with my female friends in the film industry they would kind of just roll their eyes and hint to me that this was completely normal. At that time, I started looking for other posters that mimicked what they were doing to ours and I found so so many that looked almost identical to our movie. And as a guy I definitely recalled seeing this type of poster art on VHS and DVD covers at Blockbuster when I was younger. So, at that point, I got depressed that what essentially I’d worked on for the last 5 or so years was being reduced to the lowest common denominator. We now looked like a bargain bin movie you’d find at a gas station in Rural Oklahoma.
BRADLEY, I AM FROM TULSA. But, I hear you.
Are there things contractually that people (/creators if you will) should be looking out for that allows this? Was there any advice you were given as to how to avoid this in future?
Great question. When you make low budget, independent movies you often have very very little power when it’s time to try and sell it. The only way you have power is if somehow your movie strikes a major bidding war, you have a top line exec producer or producer who can go to bat for you or… you somehow negotiate early on that they can’t change the title or market it in ways you don’t approve. But obviously if you don’t have any power (see above) then there’s no reason a big studio or distro company will grant you that rights in the contract. Our main problem was we made a “mainstream style comedy” for a small budget with no mainstream comedy stars (Kate McKinnon had only been on SNL for a year and a half at that time). So, I’m pretty sure our distributor just didn’t quite know what box they could put us in.
How did it sour your experience as a creator and writer? You’re still proud of this film as you should be, but you said it “puts a bitter taste” in your mouth because of the final product. Was wondering if you could expand on that.
I have great affection for the movie and the experiences I had making it and premiering it. We got to screen at the Inner Sanctum at UCB before it came out and that will still stand out as one of the best nights of my life. However, it’s surreal to not want to say your movie’s name out loud at a party or meeting. I can’t utter the name Balls Out without it feeling like something has been taken away from me. Obviously, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter — but I think it was the casualness at which a board room of studio execs who I’d never met (and likely will never meet) changed the core of what I’d put my heart and soul into the last several years. And of course — looking outside of myself — the core of the marketing is reductive and very sexist. We had two great female leads in the film — Kate McKinnon and Nikki Reed — who both deliver really fun and lively performances. They (and their male co-stars as well) deserve more than the marketing this movie got. And the fact that they now probably feel a little stigma towards the final product because of the way it was marketed makes me feel sad.
What was some of the language you heard the men (or women) pushing this idea use? The studio exec said because there was no gratuitous sex or objectification it “didn’t pop”. Did they say things like “sex sells” etc? Did they speak in a way that casually demeaned women around you, or was this just a marketing tactic? Were there any specific examples of other movies they wanted your movie to be more like?
The main tagline I heard these dude-bros say was that “Clever doesn’t sell. Sex sells.” The problem is there’s no sex in the movie. The only nudity is a quick shot of half of Jake Lacy’s butt in a very weird, completely non-sexual scene. So, the marketing is inherently a lie. If you’re a potential viewer and you see a CGI lady-butt on the cover with a title like “Balls Out” and a suggestive tagline then either one of two things will happen 1.) if you want to see a movie that has T&A in it — you’re going to be very disappointed with this one and 2.) if you want a fun, indie comedy with up and coming SNL stars in it then you have no idea that this is a movie that has all that. And it obviously just perpetuates a pervasive, negative stereotype that male dominated comedies (and make no mistake, I’m aware our movie is predominantly male) need to have sex and nudity in them to sell. I wanted to take a cue from comedies like Dodgeball, Wet Hot American Summer, and Anchorman that you can have a lot of dudes and “dude-humor” but you don’t have to objectify women or be completely crude or base to get a laugh. I’m aware our movie has a lot of slapstick and dick jokes in it, but I feel like it’s all in a spirit of good fun. Obviously, I was just a bit naive in thinking studio execs would see that as well.
Thank you, Bradley. We will do our best to spare you when the women coup.
Keep sending me the headless women you see! (HeadlessHollywood@gmail.com, @HlywoodHeadless)