The Roommate is a C-grade psychological thriller about a mentally deranged college freshman who befriends and then stalks the beautiful and popular woman with whom she shares a dorm room.
Christy Administration Building is a historic stone edifice that sits high atop a hill in Winfield, Kan., where it dominates the campus of the Methodist-affiliated Southwestern College.
Administrators of the college were taken aback to see the 1909 building in the background of a promotional poster for The Roommate, which raked in $15.6-million last weekend despite being panned by movie critics.
“Our concern is the association — the unauthorized association — of what we think is an iconic image of the college with a ‘slasher’ movie,” President W. Richard Merriman told The Winfield Daily Courier.
Sony Pictures Entertainment removed the building’s image from its Web site and other marketing materials after being notified of the college’s concerns, the paper reported, and so far, Southwestern has not pursued legal action.
The photo reportedly came from iStockPhoto, which sells royalty-free images online. The poster came to the attention of President Merriman after two students posted photos on Facebook of a “coming attraction” poster for The Roommate that they had seen at a movie theater in Oklahoma.
Seventy-seven steps ascend to the Christy Administration Building, which is depicted in Southwestern’s logo. The Council of Independent Colleges’ Historic Campus Architecture Project calls the building “the dominant architectural edifice in Winfield, indeed in Cowley County.”
The Roommate, on the other hand, is dismissed by the Chicago Tribune as “one of the worst films you’ll ever see directed by an Oscar nominee.” Christian E. Christiansen’s At Night was in the running for the 2008 Academy Award for “Best Short Film, Live Action.”
—Don Troop
Follow Tweed through your favorite RSS reader:
One Response to Iconic Campus Building Turns Up on Ad for Psycho Thriller
johnlaudun - February 10, 2011 at 9:31 am
While I am not convinced that pubic facades can be owned and their images controlled, this event does highlight the fact that one revenue stream for photographers it to capture public events and places, and people in them, and sell, and control, those images as independent art without really deferring in anyway to the individuals involved. This was brought acutely to my attention in viewing a film biography of Walker Percy at the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival last month. The film is staggeringly good in its attention to detail and in its telling of Percy’s life, but it reused several images to a degree that it forced me to ask the filmmaker about it later. Unfortunately for him, and for the Percy family who was fully involved and supportive of the project, a great number of images of Walker Percy are owned, and controlled, by a single photographer who wants an exorbitant fee for their use. Now, do I think the photographer is witless for not seeing the film as an advertisement for his photography — indeed in not working with the filmmaker to make it possible for people to buy prints used in the film — yes. But I also think it is ethically wrong for the photographer not to give back to the Percys what they so generously gave him: access to their husband, father, brother.