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New Jodie Foster Film Draws Readers To the Novel That Inspired It

Indie Film Cross-Promotion a Boon to University Press

When the University of Georgia Press published The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys to modest fanfare in 1994, Allison Reid never dreamed she'd be deciding what to wear to a movie premier. But nearly ten years later, the book has become a Jodie Foster movie, starring Foster and a cast of up-and-coming young actors, and is receiving a burst of new life thanks to some savvy marketing and cross-promotion.

"We always felt the book merited this kind of attention, and now we are just riding the tide of excitement surrounding the film," says Reid, UGP marketing manager. "We look forward to setting up a screening in Athens, so we can share with our local community the national excitement about this project. We are thrilled that Jodie Foster and her production company discovered this great coming-of-age story, and feel that their interpretation definitely does the story and its talented author, Chris Fuhrman, justice." Tragically, Fuhrman died of cancer in 1991 while working on the final revision of the novel. A new paperback edition was published in September 2001.

Even before The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys first appeared in print, the moving and often hilarious coming-of-age story seemed assured of cult status:

* It was set in the seventies, a decade yet to be given its full due by contemporary creative types from musicians to fashion designers. * It had an eye-popping jacket (by a then up-and-coming illustrator who has since added a New Yorker cover to his portfolio). * It dealt seriously with comic books, a genre whose diehard fans all but define the very notion of a "cult" following. * It was put out by an unlikely publisher, a mid-sized university press in the South. * And, its young author, Chris Fuhrman, died before his first and only novel was published.

Fast-forward to June 14, 2002, when the film version of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys begins its two-week opening schedule that covers more than 100 major national markets. In addition to Foster herself, the film stars Vincent D'Onofrio, Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone, and Emile Hirsch. ThinkFilms, the movie's distributor, and Egg Pictures, its production company, will not be the only ones anxiously gauging its reception by critics and moviegoers.

"Altar Boys has always been very special to us," says Reid. "It's a word-of-mouth kind of book--it finds its way reader by reader. We're used to a steady, low-intensity, almost underground buzz, but that's all changing as the film's release approaches. Since its publication in the fall, it has been a BookSense 76 pick, and we've focused a lot of our promotion on the movie tie-in on bookstores. We're now in the middle of an email campaign to bookstores in all the markets where the movie is being released, to make sure they have the title in stock."

Cross-over Marketing Strategies In addition to the website, ThinkFilm has produced bookmarks and posters for a mailing to bookstores nationwide. The biggest push thus far occurred at BookExpo, where a screening of the movie was held at the Tribeca Grand Screening Room and attendees received books and other book promotional materials, including magnets and postcards. UGP is now working with movie theaters nationwide to get review copies into the hands of film critics at the various media screening locations before the movie is released to the public. An aggressive web media publicity pitch is underway, aimed at movie, teen, and animation-focused websites, since the movie's audience is young and web-savvy.

"It's been great to work with the movie's distribution company, ThinkFilm," says Reid. "They have been 100% supportive of the book since we developed the relationship and they definitely recognize the advantages of cross-promotion and cooperative marketing. Plus, I'm sure they recognize that we share an audience of readers and independent film enthusiasts, in addition to the modest cult following our book has gathered since its publication."

"All of this is definitely helping the book break into the mainstream. So many people hadn't heard of it until its connection to the film. To them, Altar Boys is a brand-new book, even though it's been around for years. I'm really happy for the true believers, the readers who've been bugging their friends to pick it up, and bookstore people who have been hand-selling it for years. Now, with so many more people starting to take notice, the fans who were there at the start get to say, 'I told you so!'" Like the novel, the film version of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys centers on a group of eighth-graders at a Catholic school. The kids are smarter than their teacher will admit, they're creative in ways that she can't handle, and they have trouble in their lives that she can't see. One way the kids deal with the confusion of adolescence is to immerse themselves in comic books. They buy them, and they draw their own.

The kids are partial to the type of comic book characters pioneered by Stan Lee, creator of SPIDER-MAN. Such superheroes, like the kids themselves, are conflicted, sensitive, and highly idealistic -- all of which they hide under a veil of cynicism. The film of Altar Boys handles this crucial story element by cutting back and forth between live action and animated sequences. The animated scenes, which feature comic-superheroes-come-to-life, were directed by the creator of SPAWN, Todd McFarlane. (Read reviews of the film at IndieWire.com and The New York Times).

"It's fun to bring Altar Boys to bookselling and publishing tradeshows," says Reid. "The reception at BookExpo America in New York was fantastic. News of the film, and of Jodie Foster's association with it, definitely drove people to our display. Of course, there were people who still had not heard of the book or the film, and from them we got lots of questions about whether it is about the current scandals involving priests and children. Actually, it has very little to do with that - but those questions are great opportunities to engage people and tell them what the book, and now the film, are really about: growing up--the pain and the thrill of it."

"Look at what people have said about the book, for instance, on Amazon.com: 'Nothing I've read comes close to telling the trials and the daily struggles of being that misfit kid,' or 'I have never read a more accurate or moving account of being young.' Altar Boys seems to strike a chord with everyone who reads it. It's gratifying to see it beginning to reach people in greater numbers."

Praise for The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys:

"Heartbreaking yet hilarious . . . Can be compared to many of the classic coming-of-age novels." - Publishers Weekly

"This is the real thing, writing done with everything on the line." - Boston Globe

"This book deserves many, many readers . . . A story as odd, vivid, painful, splendid, and sad as adolescence itself." - Commonweal

"Sad and beautiful . . . Captures wonderfully the vulnerability and overdone cynicism of adolescence." - Philadelphia Inquirer

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman Published by The University of Georgia Press ISBN 0-8203-2338-1 $14.95 paperback

Synopsis:

The eighth-graders are loose in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Set in Savannah, Georgia, in the early 1970s, this is a novel of the anarchic joy of youth and encounters with the concerns of early adulthood. Francis Doyle, Tim Sullivan, and their three closest friends are altar boys at Blessed Heart Catholic Church and eighth-grade classmates at the parish school. They are also inveterate pranksters, artistic, and unimpressed by adult authority. When Sodom vs. Gomorrah '74, their collaborative comic book depicting Blessed Heart's nuns and priests gleefully breaking the seventh commandment, falls into the hands of the principal, the boys, certain that their parents will be informed, conspire to create an audacious diversion. Woven into the details of the boys' preparations for the stunt are touching, hilarious renderings of the school day routine and the initiatory rites of male adolescence, from the first serious kiss to the first serious hangover.

Chris Fuhrman grew up as a Catholic in Savannah, Georgia, where he was born in 1960. He received his master's degree from Columbia University. Fuhrman died of cancer in 1991 while working on the final revision of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, his first and only novel.

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