Thursday 28 May 2009

Product placement or not?


Off to see the latest Star Trek movie (not a Trekkie, it’s half term) and there’s a scene in a bar towards the start where the future Captain Kirk gets in a brawl. Prior to that he’s pestering the future Lieutenant Uhura, who has just ordered a round of drinks including one called Budweiser Classic (probably brewed in a plant somewhere on Alpha Centuri, cheaper labour costs etc). Unashamed product placement or a favour returned? A Bud plant in California (Earth) apparently stood in for the engineering bit on the Enterprise, so you have to make your own mind up. Mind you, I would have thought Kirk’s favourite tipple would have been anything from Rogue.

It’s a bit sad when one starts noting these things in a movie; I remembering trying to see what was the name of the Peruvian beer James Bond was drinking in a Lima bar in Casino Royale, but to no avail.

2 comments:

  1. I'm obsessed by the beer they drink in "My Name is Earl". It looks good. I worked out the name one day but forgot it again before I could Google it. Then again, it's probably just mocked-up bottles.

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  2. I remember reading that during the making of either The Likely Lads or Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads that they drank real beer on set when they filmed in the pub, and that if they had to do too many takes they would be plastered (I also remember while shift subbing at the TV Times in the 1990s going through their — paper — archive section and finding a news story about one of the actors being done for drunk and disorderly in Covent Garden in the 1970s, that’s taking method acting too far, allegedly). Meanwhile, John Thaw once said all that beer they drank in Morse was Kaliber or some such nonsense; no wonder he looked sour.

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