With 'Santitos,' Latino Film Marketing Breaks Out of Its Niche

By LORENZA MUNOZ

Feb. 1, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

If studio filmmaking is a risky venture at best, then making and selling Spanish-language movies for U.S. Latinos is a giant leap into the unknown. But over the weekend one company aggressively jumped into the void of distributing Spanish-language films with a Mexican romantic comedy, “Santitos.”

The Los Angeles-based Latin Universe launched an unprecedented nine-state, 155-theater release of the $1.5-million movie on Friday. In Los Angeles County alone, the movie opened on 45 screens in areas with large Latino populations, such as El Monte, Huntington Park and Alhambra. By comparison, independent movies for a niche audience are usually “platformed,” meaning they open in a few theaters in select metropolitan areas and grow from there.

Latin Universe backed the release with a $1-million Spanish-only marketing campaign--a significant amount of money for Spanish media publicity. They have, for the most part, completely bypassed the English-language media and the art-house market.

Whether their gambit is foolhardy or visionary remains to be seen. In its first weekend the film took in about $130,000--about $840 per screen--which seems a pittance by Hollywood standards, but it is a figure the company was expecting for its first weekend.

Ted Perkins, president of Latin Universe, acknowledges it is on a very steep learning curve, essentially exploring uncharted waters.

“It is going to take some time to build this audience,” he said. “It’s a gradual process.”

The producers also acknowledge that success may be found through trial and error.

“This is virgin territory,” said Lemore Syvan, of Goldheart Pictures, co-producers of the film. “We knew [the first weekend] was not going to be a big splash weekend. We are relying on solid word of mouth.”

Perkins said the film has received such positive reviews from mainstream English-language critics that the company hopes to distribute the movie in some art-house theaters within the next three weeks.

Many observers are questioning the wisdom of launching such a small movie, with stars relatively unknown to U.S. Latinos, on such a wide basis. Others are questioning whether enough publicity was garnered for the film and why the company decided to open it on Super Bowl weekend--a traditionally slow period at the box office.

But whatever the results, Latin Universe is making history.

The film, which has English subtitles, is reminiscent of the 1992 hit “Like Water for Chocolate,” with its magical realism and sweet, romantic narratives. The movie, based on the best-selling book “Esperanza’s Box of Saints,” by Maria Amparo Escandon, won the Sundance Film Festival Latin American prize last year.

Latin Universe’s approach to selling “Santitos” is what convinced Mexican director Alejandro Springall to sign with the distribution company instead of other U.S. studios that courted him.

“When I sat with the traditional distributors, I asked them to give me a real strategy for the Hispanic market,” said Springall. “But they always saw it as a foreign-language movie for the art-house market. I have always thought that Spanish is not a foreign language in this country. I wanted it to be treated as a mainstream picture for the Hispanics here.”

The “Santitos” marketing campaign has smartly used cultural touchstones--such as religion, sex, gossip and wrestling--to capture people’s attention. They are marketing “Santitos” as a romantic comedy featuring a meddlesome priest who watches soap operas, a wrestler masked as the Angel of Justice, a sex-crazed demon and a beautiful woman who drives them all crazy. The film stars Mexican actors Dolores Heredia, Demian Bichir and Alberto Estrella, all well-known in Mexico, but perhaps not as familiar to U.S. Latinos.

Springall and the producers of the film recognize that they are, in a sense, guinea pigs for a much larger experiment. But it’s a strategy that--if successful--will benefit them and future generations of Spanish-language and Latino filmmakers in the United States.

“I’m sure these guys [at the studios] must have thought I was an idiot, and maybe I am, but I wanted to take a risk because I think this movie could be the launching point for the market,” said Springall.

Latino Filmgoers Treated

as ‘Secondary Market’

Detailed knowledge on the habits, trends and tastes of the Spanish-speaking moviegoing audience is limited.

Whereas mainstream studios have audience trends and habits down to a science, even knowing how many ounces of popcorn an average moviegoer eats, the Latino market has been one big confounding question mark.

“In the United States, the Latino movie market has always been treated as a secondary market,” said Isabel Valdes, president of a Bay Area-based marketing firm and co-author of the Hispanic Market Handbook. “We don’t have the wealth of data that there is for the mainstream market. We don’t have psychographics of the Latino [movie] market.”

To gain an audience, Latin Universe is planning a slate of at least six quality Spanish-language movies this year, with one opening every 10 to 12 weeks nationwide. Consistency is the key for audiences to become loyal followers.

It plans to release “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas” (Sex, Shame and Tears), a wildly popular, contemporary Mexican film about three young couples and their foibles, in early to mid-March. In mid-April or late May it plans to release the comedy “La India 2000.” And the company plans to begin producing its own films by spring.

“We are saying to the Spanish and bilingual market, ‘You are going to go to be entertained,’ ” said Juan Carlos Nieto, marketing chief for Latin Universe. “The movie titles may be different, but the brand name bringing them to you isn’t.”

The company has signed on Mike Doban, former senior vice president of Metropolitan Theaters, as its distribution head. Doban, who has worked in distribution for 22 years, says the response he received from exhibitors to “Santitos” was surprising--and indeed in part it was their interest that prompted the company to release it so wide, according to Nieto.

The ‘Latino’ Label

Is Often Confusing

Latin Universe is a small company, with only nine full-time employees. In fact, it is so short-staffed and budget-conscious that Perkins and Nieto themselves edited the television spots. In addition to their Spanish-language television, radio and print campaigns, they have set up a bilingual Internet site.

In selling the movies--both to the exhibitors and the future audience--they are staying away from the “Latino” label--a name tag considered amorphous and confusing by most Spanish-speaking people.

“The minute you say, ‘This is a Latino movie,’ it’s like branding it and creating an artificial story,” said Perkins. “People think, ‘What is it? How do you sell it? What kind of money do you have to spend to get to it, and what kind of sociological and racial baggage are they going to bring to it?’ ”

With such a diverse community, Nieto is also trying to stay away from labeling the films by their country of origin.

“We are not selling [“Santitos”] as a Mexican film,” said Nieto. “We are keeping away from [saying], ‘You are Mexican,’ ‘You are Cuban,’ ‘You are Puerto Rican.’ We are going for the universal appeal of entertainment.”

They are also staying away from the standard studio approach of selling one of the few Latin stars as the hook to lure audiences.

Latinos are much more sophisticated than they are given credit for, said Nieto.

“The studios often say, ‘We need someone to push this film,’ and they get the ‘brown pick of the month,’ ” said Nieto. “The community doesn’t embrace or react to them anymore because it’s always the same five famous ‘brown’ people. We want to expand this.”

Studios have made sporadic attempts at marketing directly to Spanish-language audiences in the U.S., such as the 1987 commercial hit “La Bamba.” However, that campaign was done in conjunction with an English-language counterpart.

They key is knowing the marketplace and selling their movies as a cultural alternative to mainstream Hollywood.

Did Publicity Campaign

Take the Right Tack?

Another production company, New Latin Pictures, had great success in 1996 with its Dominican movie “Nueba Yol” when it was released in mainstream theaters in New York.

That film, a romantic comedy that cost $350,000, brought in $3.3 million domestically. In New York, the movie out-grossed all the other English-language films showing at the same theater.

“We got a lot of publicity going in New York months before it opened,” said Kit Parker, president of New Latin Pictures. Parker is scheduled to release another film, “Luminarias,” in Los Angeles in April. “We opened it and within no time people were calling their relatives in Boston, Miami and so forth.”

And here is where a lot of observers are saying Latin Universe might have played its cards wrong. Though movie trailers for the film began showing in theaters two weeks before its release, spot buying on television and radio advertising occurred only a week before the film opened. Most of the free publicity on Spanish-language TV, like Univision’s morning show “Despierta America,” the popular afternoon talk-show circuit and prime-time entertainment shows, happened the day before the film’s opening.

But marketing executive Valdes says perhaps Latin Universe is on the right path.

“We [Latinos] are very spontaneous people,” she said. “[Latin Universe] might be better off using their money later and expecting a big bang maybe a week or two later.”

But it is rare to find a movie that picks up steam after its first weekend; they usually drop from there. Whether Latin Universe’s approach succeeds, only time will tell.

“They might be coming up with a new way to cut the cake,” said Valdes. “If they do, we will be learning something totally new.”