Thursday, November 30, 2006

Adventures in Attribution

I have to extend my congratulations to Frank Creasy (and I'll try not to sprain my arm patting myself on the back in the process). If you perused the T-D's Weekend magazine, you'll see that our pals at the Barksdale pulled a quote from Mr. Creasy's comment on this here blog for use in their ad for "Over the River and Through the Woods." It's kind of funny since in his comment he specifically mentions that it's a good thing he's an actor not a critic. And then suddenly, he's being attributed as if he is one!

It's kind of fascinating, this pulling of quotes from reviews for ads. Maybe Judi C. will post something someday about what goes into it. Are specific adjectives important (in the "OTRATTW" ad, "remarkable" is pulled from my review)? Are there marketing angles that are being highlighted (e.g., Mr. Creasy's mention of the play being "in the spirit of the season")? It usually doesn't occur to me until long after I've written my review that it might be excerpted for an ad. And the few times I've written something and thought, "hey, that'd be a perfect quote for an ad," that particularly clever turn of phrase has gone completely unnoticed every single time. So it goes.

The best anecdote along these lines that I have is one year when the Firehouse put out a season schedule flyer that had two quotes from me on it. However, at the time, I was writing for Style as D.L. Hintz and for 64 Magazine under my real name so they could use me twice without appearing to pull from the same source. Pretty tricky!

2 comments:

Frank Creasy said...

Thank you Dave, I'm humiliated (er, I mean HUMBLED) by this honor and I hope your arm is healing well!

Honestly, it never occurred for one minute my posting on your blog would prompt a request to quote me...as you mention, I'm more comfortable spouting the words of playwrights than creating snappy sound bites of my own. But in the end I just gave my impression of the show, which did differ from Ms. Haubenstock's (who, by the way, has been quite generous to yours truly in the past, and I respect the fact that she simply gave HER honest impression). I had no problem granting permission for the quote. Now, if only that check would show up in the mail...

Anonymous said...

It's been 17 days since you last updated this blog, David! Where are you? Did you whisk the wife and kiddies off on family holiday vacation? Please write soon!!