A lot of people liked Judd Apatow's latest comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which billboards peppered many cities in the US with sayings like "YOU SUCK, SARAH MARSHALL" and "MY MOTHER ALWAYS HATED YOU, SARAH MARSHALL."
Needless to say, the real life Sarah Marshalls weren't amused:
one of the several thousand real life Sarah Marshall’s in the U.S., this one from Greenfield, Massachusetts, has been seriously irked. "I was shocked to see all the billboards and posters that hated against me and people with my name," she says. “It’s just so bizarre.”
To say the least. "My friends are kind of picking on me about it,” she says of the in-Sarah's-face promotion campaign for the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall [watch the movie trailer and see interviews with the film’s cast]. “I had a neighbor who said they saw all these 'I hate Sarah Marshall' signs, and I saw the TV commercials.” That’s when the snit hit the fan for this Sarah Marshall and she decided to mount her own campaign. Call it “the Marshall Plan.” She made her own sign. It said, “YOU SUCK JUDD APATOW.” (Source: Fancast by Quendrith Johnson, Photo: Sarah Marshall (duh!) at Fancast - Thanks Linnea!)
Another Sarah Marshall complains about the choice of words in the ads:
"When you're walking down the street, it gets a little wearing even though you know it's not you and has nothing to do with you," said Sarah Marshall, 34, who lives in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. "You see . . . words like 'hate' and 'suck' with your name over and over again. It just doesn't feel pleasant inside."
Her mother, 70, who has the same name, says she cannot wait until the movie debuts and the signs are taken down. "I'm very, very upset," the upper East Sider said. "I'm an old person. It's today's lingo and today's jargon but it's a little rough for my taste." (Source: NY Daily News article by Jessica Durando, Photo: Antonelli/News)
But not one particular Sarah Marshall was quite happy with all the attention: a professor of art at The University of Alabama, who owns SarahMarshall.com, is thankful of the 20,000 people who have (mistakenly) visited her website since the movie was promoted.
Now, in her own "Marshall Plan," Sarah Marshall (the professor) is asking all Sarah Marshalls of the world to unite in respond to the ad campaign!
Cheers,
Jim (for Fancast).
I think I would have remembered doing that...