Karen Sortito, Who Told 007 to Start Drinking Smirnoff, Dies at 49

[The Straight Story]

Karen Sortito, Who Told 007 to Start Drinking Smirnoff, Dies at 49


Karen Sortito, a movie-marketing executive who pushed the limits of product tie-ins when she put the world’s most famous Aston Martin driver, James Bond, behind the wheel of a BMW and put him in business with Visa cards, Smirnoff vodka, Heineken beer and even L’Oréal lipstick (“Bond Bordeaux”), died in Manhattan on Monday. She was 49.

The cause was cancer, her sister Diane Ritucci said.

A specialist in what marketers call brand enhancement, Ms. Sortito was at the forefront in a relatively new era of product tie-ins in the movies. (The era is generally acknowledged to have begun in 1982, when the shy, stranded alien in “E.T.” is lured out of hiding with a trail of Reese’s Pieces.) Moving from New York to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, she worked for 20th Century Fox, MGM/UA and other Hollywood film companies, earning a reputation for being a character herself, brash, spikily intelligent and forthright to a fault.

“If she was passionate about something, you didn’t want to be on the other side of the table,” said Tom Sherak, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who was her boss at Fox and at Revolution Studios. “I once bought her a pair of boxing gloves.”

Ms. Sortito came to prominence in 1995 when, helping to rejuvenate the James Bond franchise for MGM, she created a tie-in for the film “GoldenEye” with BMW, putting a new Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in a new model, the sleek and sporty Z3; sales of the car spiked (Ms. Sortito bought one herself), and the film was No. 1 at the box office its opening week.



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/business/19sortito.html?_r=2&hpw

[CBGLuthier]

1. 49 Years and her legacy is the ruination of "artistic" endeavors.

Oh well. Shame for even someone useless to die so young.

[LawnLover]

4. I don't think it's the ruination of anything

Movies are extremely expensive to produce. To be honest, the only product placement I've ever noticed in the two newer Bond films is Sony/Erickson phones a couple of times. Other than that it was completely unobtrusive. And if that kind of product placement helps get the art made, then I see nothing wrong with it.

[KurtNYC]

12. bond flicks are underwritten by the MI complex in britain

they are propaganda films. they made the cold war sexy.

if bond drives a BMW instead of Austin Martin I don't see what is ruined.

major feature films are a business first, very few of them are Art I think.

[spanone]

17. how kind

[Codeine]

20. Bond films are "art"?

I don't think so.

[Very_Boring_Name]

24. Art is in the eye of the beholder

[Initech]

29. Good Bond movies - Goldfinger, Goldeneye, Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace

The rest have some good and some bad, but those are the ones that really stand out to me, IMO

[RandomKoolzip]

2. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this woman embodied why

Hollywood movies have sucked for the last thirty years or so. Evil, evil, evil. Thanks, lady. :(

[LawnLover]

5. Evil Evil Evil?

Because of product placement? Seriously?

Don't you think that's a bit of an overreaction?

[Sal Minella]

8. Have you seen the "Hamlet" in which King Hamlet's ghost disappears

by walking INTO a Pepsi or Coke machine? The camera remains focused on the machine for some time after the ghost disappears.

It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. But maybe I do overreact . . . ?

[LawnLover]

10. Yes, you do.

Evil Evil Evil is not a company trying to sell a product in whatever way they can, or a movie company trying to finance a movie through product placement.

Evil is that company using foreign slaves to make their product or taking away pensions from their workers or destroying mom and pop businesses, etc.

If you call something as innocuous as product placement evil, you dilute the REAL evil in the world.

[Sal Minella]

7. We may never know for sure, but I suspect Big Tobacco was paying

for cigarettes to be included in sexy scenes in movies long before this lady came down the pike.

In many earlier movies, the smoking of cigarettes is just awkward and distracting, and feels grafted on. But no doubt this imprinted "smoking is sexy" in the minds of the young, and judging from the distracting intrusions of smoking in recent Columbia-Tristar movies, it still works.

[KurtNYC]

13. films have sold things since the beginning

ideas mostly (like stereotypes and prejudice) but also clothing, other movies (serials), toys, soundtracks and wars.

seems pretty unfair to put that on one person, especially one who was 20 years old and not working in the film biz when Speilberg put Reese's pieces in E.T.

[Codeine]

21. Perspective, dude.

Serial killers are evil. Putting Bond in a BMW is just marketing.

[RandomKoolzip]

26. Y'all gotta understand:

Um, I was engaging in a bit of humorous hyperbole. People do that. Examples? Dialogue from the "Eegah!" episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Pay close attention to the "Styx/Hitler" section):

Crow: Ow!
Joel: Oh, I'm sorry, pal. I'm just so distracted. I can't stop thinking about that sweet service station in today's film. Did you guys notice how sleek and beautiful it was?
Servo: Um, no, Joel, I can't say that I did, heh-heh

Koo-koo! Koo-koo!
Joel: I'm serious, you guys! There was a time that we as a nation took pride in our service stations! They gleamed like a beacon of hope from coast to coast. Then one day: kablooey! Sky Chief super service turned into the Tank 'n' Tummy. I don't mind tellin' ya, the day this country went self-serve is the day that Hell started to bubble over and flood the earth.
Crow: I hate to burst your bubble, Joel, but what about the bubonic plague? World Wars? Stalin?
Joel: Well, those are all big things. Hell works best when it's a lot subtler. Let me give you an example: Okay, what do you think of Adolf Hitler?
Crow: Well, I hate him, naturally.
Joel: Okay, now what do you think of the band Styx?
Crow: Well, they had a couple of decent... Oh, my God, you're right!
Servo: I get it now, Joel! You know, I don't know exactly when Hell started for me, but I think it had something to do with Christopher Cross.
Joel: Yeah, and remember the time Charlie Weaver died, and it wasn't even in the papers?
Crow: Or when they 86'd Jarts!
Servo: I think the first time Flo said "Kiss my grits!", something all of us withered and died!
Crow: Using Joe Camel to sell cigarettes to kids seems like a pretty ripe slice of Hell.
Joel: Yeah, I agree with that. And how about the time Denis Leary released No Cure For Cancer as an album, or when Vicki Lawrence won a Grammy for "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia"?
Servo: I know I stand alone on this, but the day Blansky's Beauties got cancelled.
Crow: Yeah, you pretty much stand alone on that. Sinbad's pretty icky.
Joel: Yeah, and how about the Charlene Tilton workout video?
Servo: Joel! How can we possibly survive in a world that keeps giving us constant images of Hell?
Joel: Well, there's personal liberty, strength of convictions; those have been known to work. And there are the times when we rise as one to beat back Hell. Like the time when we as a nation said "No!" to Yahoo Serious.
Crow: I remember that. There we were, inexplicably drawn to the slobbering mouth of Hell. Then, at the last moment, saved just like Moses and the Israelites.
Servo: Now who in Creation is powerful enough to do that?!
Crow : Gee, Davey, do ya think it was God?

You can all relax yer sphicters now.

[Dreamer Tatum]

31. Attempt to walkback stupid comments FAIL. nt

[RandomKoolzip]

32. Oh JE-sus christ.

Like you can read my mind, super-genius. Go sit on a knife.

On edit: why the fuck am I trying to defend my words to a) a total stranger, and b) a total stranger who, going by his/her posts, appears to be a humorless knuckleknob? Fucking hell, this place sucks. Now I know why I take year-long vacations from DU. The little insight I glean simply doesn't outweigh the pain and boredom of having to endure the total assholery.


On second edit: "Fail" is so 2008. "Fail" in all caps is Dec. 31, 2007. :eyesroll:

[Dreamer Tatum]

22. She was EVIL because you don't like movies?

Jesus - get a GRIP.

[RandomKoolzip]

27. Grip my ass.

See my post above, hondo.

[kenny blankenship]

3. Cancer takes the Marketeer to its bosom. She's home now.

Leaving aside the placement of Smirn-ugghh in that juvenile male whack-off fantasy character's hand, who was it in the first place that told him that SHAKING a martini was acceptable? That is a fucking horrible thing to do to a martini.

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. Yeah, that c*** had it coming, huh?

I can't believe this place when people die.

[Vickers]

6. After reading some of the replies, I had to check my URL.

Yup, still on DU.

:wow:

Rest easy, Ms. Sortito...sorry you don't pass the DU Purity Test©.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. I've been doing that a lot, particularly lately

I was going to write something laudatory about Al Franken, only to find he'd been thrown under the bus.

--d!

[KurtNYC]

14. or the NYT test

hope the author of that article doesn't stumble on to an Austin Powers film as it might be shockingly blasphemous.

Maybe it is because I knew her but I don't recall the Times taking a dump on the grave quite like that for others. First of all James Bond is a fictional character (apparently a sacred one to some) so Karen didn't tell a fictional character to do anything. The Bond franchise was never Karen's to control. Not even remotely. It is an amorphous creature, some might say 'an octopussy.' There are unauthorized books and parodies, spin-offs and clones. Bond movies make hard alcohol, cigarettes and tiny guns look sexy. But an obit (?) like this just makes the NYT look naive.

[Vickers]

16. I totally agree with you. I'm not entirely familiar with how the NYT normally

does obits, but this seems singularly mean and petty.

Sorry about your colleague, Kurt.

:(

[KurtNYC]

11. I worked with this woman in the early '90s

wow. Karen Sortito and Tom Sherak. That was like a lifetime ago. We worked in the same division and she interviewed me for a job that was open. I didn't get it and worked on the Academy Awards instead. wow

A smart, honest, stylish woman in a tough business. and she's my age

good bye Karen :cry:

[Dreamer Tatum]

23. No need for tears- look upthread. She was evil. nt

[Aristus]

15. Marketing tie-ins and James Bond predate Karen Sortito.

I remember reading the John Gardner James Bond novels back in the '80's. I don't remember all of the products mentioned by name in the books, but I do remember American Express popping up seemingly on every other page...

[lpbk2713]

18. I don't know about E.T. being first.

Keenan Wynn and the Coke machine came before that.

[devilgrrl]

19. Rest in peace.

eom

[Initech]

28. Marketing tie-ins have ruined artisitc integrity.

To quote Bill Hicks - "I bet you guys sleep like fucking babies at night. What did you do today honey? We just made arsenic children's food. We just asked the question are your kids screaming too much at night?".

[DavidDvorkin]

30. She ruined James Bond, because Bond films are all about art

Apparently.