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Celebrities get more attention than regular people? Shocker.
Duke lacrosse bros weren’t celebrities
Agreed. And if the accused individuals in the France case had been French bankers that nobody had ever heard of before, you can bet the case would have provoked a lot more outrage.
Even Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein weren't celebrities in the sense that they were relatively unknown before the accusations came out against them; the main reason they are well known is the accusations themselves.
To echo @FiveHourMarathon: other than Harvey Weinstein, the only single individuals more frequently thanked in Oscar acceptance speeches were Steven Spielberg and God. If that's not a celebrity, I don't know what is.
If you asked the average Joe or Jane in early 2000s who Harvey Weinstein was I bet few would know (do ordinary people pay attention to thank you’s in an Oscar speech — do they even pay attention to the Oscar’s?).
If you showed a picture even less would’ve been able to tell you who that was.
If you asked them who Clooney was, a majority would be able to tell you.
They don't now, but this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm old enough to remember people being outraged when The Dark Knight didn't receive a Best Picture nomination, a decision which was so controversial that it was the primary impetus for increasing the number of nominees from 5 to 10. In absolute terms, the best ratings the Oscars ever received was in 1998, when 57 million Americans (i.e. 20% of the country) tuned in. For comparison, in the same year the Seinfeld season finale saw 76 million viewers (27% of the country) tune in. Until very recently the Oscars were just as much as part of the Zeitgeist as any major sports tournament and would make for just as reliable water-cooler conversation.
Separately from the Oscars thing, The Weinstein Company produced some of the highest-grossing films of the twenty-first century, meaning millions of people would have seen the name "Weinstein" immediately before watching a film they enjoyed. That's bound to create name recognition and positive mental associations.
A noisy metric. People who work behind the camera are bound to be less facially recognisable than people who work in front of it, but that doesn't mean they aren't famous. A lot of people couldn't identify Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Peter Jackson etc. from their photos, but don't tell me these men aren't famous.
Sure people used to watch the Oscars (though still not most people). Someone ruining Weinstein in passing would not create widespread name recognition. Movies perhaps but even then how many people paid attention to that kind of thing?
Walt Disney was some what recognizable as he did shows etc as part of marketing. The other famous people were directors and people would go see movies due to directors. Pretty rare to go see a movie because of a producer.
I would argue that the company which produces and/or distributes a movie acts as a sort of seal of approval: if a movie is preceded by the 20th Century Fox intro, people hold it to a higher standard than some video uploaded to YouTube. Many movies are in fact advertised based on who the production company and/or producer was, and quite a few were commercially successful:
And those examples are just "from the producer of": I didn't even touch on "from the studio that brought you".
I'm not claiming that people went to see these movies purely on the basis of the producer's name recognition, or because the producer had previously produced a film they enjoyed. Obviously the usual traits that make a movie a commercial success count too: star power, a compelling hook, a memorable trailer, good reviews, positive word of mouth, star power (although I think it's telling that quite a few of those movies had no memorable stars and directors I'd never heard of). But I think you're understating the extent to which attaching the names of an established producer and production company to a film can help to get bums in seats.
I don’t think it’s the production per se but the association with some other property (eg Pirates of the Caribbean) that works.
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