From the tiline perspective, "Spider-Man" seems like the most plausible explanation, and everything fits neatly.
However, that's not the case.
Edgar couldn't hold back and muttered, "In my opinion, you should have been on a talk show already."
"Not showcasing your eloquence is such a waste, but apparently, Sony Columbia doesn't see it that way. They're worried that as a newcor, you might ss up the promotion, so they never even reached out to the talk shows..."
"Captain, focus," Anson interrupted Edgar's ongoing complaints, feeling the need to bring him back on track.
But Edgar didn't stop there. "They'll regret it. They missed out on a pri promotional opportunity. The distribution departnt needs to seriously reconsider their strategy."
Without a doubt, the sumr blockbuster season is fiercely competitive, with intense battles for coverage in magazines and on talk shows.
However, for a film of "Spider-Man's" caliber, if Sony Columbia wanted to develop a promotional strategy, getting on magazines and talk shows wouldn't have been a problem.
The issue was that Sony Columbia hesitated this ti. In the promotional period, they decided to play it safe, avoiding risks and sticking to a strategy focused on print dia. Forget about talk shows—they didn't even schedule any radio interviews, leaving many people bewildered by this conservative approach.
Essentially, Sony Columbia still had doubts.
First, they didn't fully trust Sam Raimi as the director.
Second, they didn't fully trust Anson and Kirsten Dunst as leads.
Third, relying solely on Willem Dafoe for promotion wasn't enough.
In conclusion, Sony Columbia felt that TV or radio promotions might expose weaknesses or even cause damage. So after weighing all the factors, they decided to shift entirely to print dia.
After all, it was still 2002, and print dia remained influential. The promotional impact of newspapers and magazines was not necessarily weaker than that of TV shows.
Edgar, however, saw this as a huge oversight.
Sony Columbia had already taken a bold risk by choosing Sam Raimi as director and casting Anson and Kirsten as the leads, so why not go all the way?
Why not continue taking risks? Why not play up the youth angle? Even if they didn't fully trust Anson's individual appeal, they could have at least created so buzz by grouping Anson, Jas, and Kirsten together.
Unfortunately, Edgar was just frustrated with no real way to help. He had no voice within Sony Columbia and could only follow the contract.
It was infuriating to even think about it.
In a rare display, Edgar widened his eyes at Anson and declared, "They'll regret it."
Anson chuckled and nodded sincerely. "I'm sure they will."
Only then did Edgar calm down a bit. He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a stack of papers, and asked, "Is this you?"
—Old school.
No computers or smartphones, just a stack of printed pages from a color printer. The image quality was slightly blurred, and you could even see the pixelation due to the original image being unclear.
Despite that, Anson recognized it.
It seed to be from a video, and these printed pages were screenshots from it.
Anson was a bit surprised, a smile creeping onto his lips. "Wow, there's a video? How did I not know? Was soone filming a ho video at the ti?"
If it were twenty years later, with smartphones making photo and video recording a part of everyday life, it wouldn't be surprising for anything to be captured. But at this ti, caras were still bulky, camcorders had to be carried on the shoulder, and handheld ho camcorders had just started becoming popular. Things were different.
For Edgar, this was more than enough. "So it really is you. Oh, God."
Anson, puzzled, asked, "Is that a positive 'Oh, God,' or a negative 'Oh, God'? Let guess, it's a positive one?"
Edgar nodded repeatedly, not responding directly to Anson. Instead, he clenched his fists, stood up, and cheered, "Oh yeah!" His face lit up with joy before he began to explain.
Here's what happened—
Before the rise of social dia, it was still the era of BBS forums.
Early last year, a post on the Yahoo community caught so attention. The post contained a video, shot using a handheld ho camcorder.
The video quality wasn't clear, and the cara was slightly shaky, clearly an amateur recording. The poster confird that it was a street performance fild in Manhattan, New York, purely by chance. But because they liked it so much, they uploaded it to the forum, hoping for more discussion.
The video featured a performance by a four-mber band, with one particularly unique elent—a cello, which was quite unusual.
Initially, due to the video's quality and the cello, the post didn't make much of an impact, receiving only minor discussions. But over ti, these small discussions started to gain montum, spreading quickly among music enthusiasts.
What began as a dozen or so discussion posts a week grew to thousands.
Amazingly, the post's popularity never waned, eventually becoming a year-long hot topic on the Yahoo community. The thread had amassed over 337,600 comnts before it was finally locked from further discussion, by then already pinned as a permanent highlight.
It's important to note that the discussion was entirely among music enthusiasts—a niche audience. Unlike how things would spread virally twenty years later, the conversation stayed within the music lover community, with no broader reach.
They analyzed the band mbers, they analyzed the music, yet no further information ever surfaced—
The song had inspired nearly a hundred cover versions, but mysteriously, the original version still hadn't been released. And yet, everyone knew the original was from that video.
It was a magical mont.
Up until last month, "The Tonight Show" team discovered this post. After understanding the backstory, they beca deeply interested and wanted to track down the band from the video to invite them for a performance on the show.
"And then, they found ."
"My God, they still couldn't believe their own judgnt—Anson? That actor Anson? Why would he appear in a video of an indie band?"
"Because the video quality was poor, they couldn't be 100% sure, so they sent the screenshots to for confirmation."
"It wasn't just them—even I wasn't sure."
"Jesus Christ, we're going to be on 'The Tonight Show,' Anson. We're going to be on 'The Tonight Show!'"
"But wait, why were you in that video? Was it from before you beca an actor?"
The information was overwhelming, leaving Edgar sowhat incoherent.
With so many questions, Anson didn't even know where to start. He himself was quite surprised, never expecting his past to resurface in this manner.
After so thought, Anson asked, "Did the show manage to contact the other three mbers?"
This was a question Edgar hadn't anticipated. He blinked, "Aren't they your friends?"
Anson chuckled, "No, we just t once. If it weren't for you bringing these screenshots, I probably would never have crossed paths with them again."
Edgar: Huh?
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