News-Record.com

"When fans embrace your meme, embrace your fans."

"Snakes on a Plane" topped the box office last weekend, although it was such a weak movie-going weekend that that's not saying a lot by Hollywood standards.

But where "Snakes on a Plane" is concerned, Hollywood standards aren't the story.

This might be one of those rare films whose opening-weekend gross -- barely $15 million, which the first "Spider-Man" probably took in in one hour -- ends up being utterly irrelevant to the effect the movie has on the culture and the loyalty it engenders in fans.

That's partly because "Snakes on a Plane" is as high-concept as even Hollywood gets. ("High concept" is a Hollywood term of art meaning a movie whose theme and meaning can be made clear in one sentence.) The title told you exactly what you were going to get -- and that was so essential to the film's appeal that when discussion arose of renaming the film during production, star Samuel L. Jackson, who had asked to be cast in the movie after hearing nothing more about it than the name, threatened to walk away from the project unless the original name was kept. From the git, the film didn't even pretend to have any pretensions.

And it certainly didn't hurt that Jackson, who has been American Filmdom's Baddest Dude for more than a decade now, so quickly and publicly embraced the project. The man has cool to spare.

But the people who made this film happen also did some very smart things. Their whole approach to the pre-release part of the film's life cycle has been to engage the potential fan on every possible level. Not only did no one drop any dumb copyright-infringement lawsuits on fan sites, director David Ellis stopped by the site after premiere night to thank fans for their support. They marketed T-shirts through CafePress, a company that caters specifically to bloggers. They sponsored contests through Yahoo that led to bloggers being invited to review the movie. And on and on.

None of that showed up in the opening-weekend gross. But I bet it shows up in coming weeks ... and when the DVD is released ... and at "Rocky Horror Picture Show"-like midnight screenings for years, perhaps decades, to come.