• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, July 8, 2013

Over the long holiday weekend, there were lots of ways to do nothing. One of them was to go to see “The Lone Ranger,” which I can be the last to report, was something virtually no one did.  It is set to become one of the biggest bombs of 2013, and if you want to know why, the answer is neatly contained in the first paragraph of A.O. Scott’s review in The New York Times:  

  “Who was that masked man?” That is not a question likely to resonate much with young people today, unless they are asking it in earnest puzzlement. By young, I mean under 70. The Lone Ranger belongs to the ancient pop culture of the Great Depression and the early baby boom. His adventures were heard on radio, starting in the 1930s, and seen on television,  from 1949 to 1957, but unlike some of his cape-wearing peers, he has mostly stayed in the past, an object of fuzzy nostalgia and mocking incredulity, a symbol of simple pleasures and retrograde attitudes.

How couldn’t the entire Walt Disney Co. not know that before it spent a reported $375 million to bring it to the screen?  In the demographically-manic movie business, it was simple to predict that even Johnny Depp as Tonto wouldn’t entice sufficient millions of movie-goers to the local Cineplex 329.  And he didn’t.

Way at the other end of the marketing spectrum is “Coffee Town,” a movie produced for $2 miilion by IAC-owned College Humor.com , which just premiered online, available on iTunes and other places,  marketed to an audience more or less pre-selected by College Humor itself.  If you go to that site, or visit its Facebook page or follow them at Twitter like I do, you already know about “Coffee Town.”  I’m not their demo but  probably most of its followers are, which makes this a pretty naturally easy movie to promote-- a comedy about an average kind of guy whose “office” is a coffee house, whose nemesis is the wise-cracking guy behind the counter and who wants to fall in love with a beautiful customer .

 “The company could spend millions of dollars to try to tell everyone about 'Coffee Town,' but why?” asks the Website Geekosystem.com.  “They can tell the people who are the most likely to want to see it about the movie for free. It’s kind of brilliant.”

“Coffee Town” stars Glenn Howerton (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), comic actors Ben Schwartz and Steve Little, Adrianne Palicki (“Friday Night Lights”) and singer Josh Groban. The trailer plays cute.

And while it’s likely that even a loser like “The Lone Ranger” will have a bigger box office, it will also be a big bomb. But the difference is more than just the size of the budget.  College Humor knew who it was aiming to reach with “Coffee Town,” and can do it efficiently online.  Disney just plainly didn’t know what it was doing at all. Tonto asked “How?” Disney I’m sure is asking “Why?”.    

pj@mediapost.com