Glaxo Finances Documentary Film About Eating
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 7th, 2010 // 7:08 am
The drugmaker sells the Alli over-the-counter diet pill, but says the film won’t be a marketing vehicle. Its partner and producer is the Creative Coalition, a non-profit political and social advocacy group with backing from such stars as Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, The New York Times reports, adding an ‘Academy-award winning’ director will be named this month at the Sundance Film Festival.
“This won’t be a marketing tool at all,” Robin Bronk, Creative Coalition’s executive director, tells the paper. This is “a natural progression of our mission to develop educational projects.” Glaxo marketing exec Rachel Ferdinando says a signed agreement gives full creative control to the director and Creative Coalition, and there are no expectations Alli will be mentioned in the flick. “The filmmakers can make a decision about whether Alli is important. We want it to be entirely transparent; we want it to have integrity. It’s a fantastic outcome if people are simply more educated.” (And if Alli sales rise, well, that’s not so bad, either, yes?).
They hope to emulate “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s 2006 documentary on climate change, which the paper notes sold $50 million in tickets worldwide. Ferdinando tells the Times the film will be ‘the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ of mindless eating,” and take a “behind-closed-doors, fly-on-the-wall” approach to unhealthy approaches to eating. “This represents a new initiative for us as a company, to take a serious issue and make it more understandable to people,” she tells the paper.
To get the point across, the Times writes that the Creative Coalition will organize a panel discussion at Sundance to promote Glaxo’s recent study findings about eating habits and talk about ways for the entertainment industry to get more involved in reducing obesity. Panelists will include Jeff Garlin of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Ricki Lake and Emme, the plus-size model, according to the paper.
photo thx to alancleaver Flickr creative commons
Justice in MI
Anyone remember “Obesity, Inc.” as associated with fen-phen?
Robert
Another “Supersize Me” or “Fast Food Nation” style documentary?
Skinny Chick
“we want it to have integrity”
Then leave it in the doctor’s office where it belongs. Nevermind the stigma these things contribute to. Peer pressure to push pills is very disturbing. This from a “political and social advocacy group”. Not all heavy people are overweight because of their eating habits. The avarage Joe is still going to resent them. Make it stop.
Pass on the movie and watch this ten times a day instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9kgQQ4p5mc
Jan Henderson
The causes of obesity are complex and still not understood. Scientific evidence indicates that dieting is not a long-term solution for the majority of the overweight population. The evidence also seems to indicate that it’s not so much the weight itself, as a diet of junk food and lack of exercise that’s unhealthy.
The weight loss industry is huge. While I find it objectionable that GSK would promote a drug by making a documentary that will undoubtedly be emotionally manipulative, it’s also true that the message about the ineffectiveness of dieting isn’t getting through to the public. The assumption that weight loss is simply a matter of will power is unfair and psychologically damaging.
GSK was a sponsor of the 2005 PBS documentary Fat: What No One Is Telling You, which I thought was well done. It’s available for instant viewing at PBS and Netflix.
Steve
This film looks to have a little more integrity with no corporate sponsors:
http://www.inspiredthemovie.com