A cult classic! :D (Moved from Novels to Movies, TV, and Theater)

I don't have an answer, sorry. I just wanted to say, I love your signature

Loads of people love it, long after its release, and it was not widely popular when it first came out.

Star Wars: not cult classic, just a favorite. Rocky Horror: cult classic like crazy. People will be in their underpants at movie theaters at midnight doing the Time Warp again for decades to come.

Unless you were saying, what qualities MAKE a book or movie a cult classic? And I would say RAMPANT AWESOMENESS that is recognizable only to a minority of the intended audience (movie-going americans, say, or whatever).

I've been called a-

Oh.

Never mind. Carry on.

ditto K.P.'s 1st paragraph.

I would proffer that if you're trying to figure what element makes something a cult classic that a willingness to take risks is probably at the top. Most movies that are immediately popular and successful are relatively risk-free. They follow conventions and offer the audience what the audience has been led to expect. Cult classics tend to fly in the face of those conventions, defying expectation, tradition, and often good taste.

LittleFlowerLei said:

I was just watching a movie that people call a "Cult Classic" and it got me wondering. What does it take for something to become a cult classic?

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A cult film has a small number fans, each highly devoted.

A cult classic has a slightly larger fan base, and also a larger number of people who have at least heard of the film, but those other people describe the movie as "weird" and possibly "too weird for me" and maybe even "I watched that in college when I was high."

Dale

Not many like it, but those who do really like it.

Camp. Lots of camp.

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Something totally weird with a small following that will quote it at a moment's notice.

Ruth2 said:

Something totally weird with a small following that will quote it at a moment's notice.

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There can be only one!

Movies or books that often aren't popular during their immediate release, but are fondly (and obsessively) remembered years down the road.

This essay on Cultographies is pretty nice:

Warning, images may be NSFW:

http://www.cultographies.com/definition.shtml

It can also be a shorthand for compatibility.

For example: In our family, whenever the kids meet a new amour, first question asked is: Do they like Buckaroo Banzai? If the answer is "eh?" the relationship is doomed. If they say, "oh yeah, that weird movie", it's doomed. If they say "Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!" we got a keeper.

Yeah we're weird. But hey, humor compatibility is important!

That would be an interesting internet dating site...

Slow word-of-mouth success. I think this happens more as a reaction to how a book/film/band is marketed than its actual content. Publishers/record labels are always hard at work trying to seed products in such a way that they appear to have cult coolness. The basic objective is to make a product appear to have been discovered, nurtured...even 'created' by its fans and not arrived off the corporate conveyor belt.

BenPanced said:

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

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I think no one's going to word it better than that.

mlazzer said:

I think no one's going to word it better than that.

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Well, yes and no. I don't like the "If you have to ask, you'll never know" viewpoint because it implies you could know intuitively.
You can ask, but you won't get an answer. To a person, no creator of any cult classic, book or film, knew they were about unleash a cult classic. If there was even a semblance of a working formula, it would have been employed with success at least a couple of times by now.

The creator of The Rocky Picture Show, for example, tried to capture lightening in a bottle twice, with a follow-up musical underground film called Shock Treatment.
It was a complete failure.

So even the creators of cult classics couldn't plan for the timing, the cultural impact, the passionate response among a certain audience. They just told stories they liked in a way they liked, and their arrow flew further than expected.

Since it's such a complete enigma, a sort of social freak accident, feel free to ask. There is no knowing, as far as I can tell, and anyone who thinks they know can put their money where their mouth is. The publishers and Hollywood would love to see the proof in that pudding.

Loved the Rocky Horror experience, especially in college. My husband doesn't get it at all.

I recall Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century (I think that's the right century) being played at SciFi cons (yes, I'm a geek) and it was great.

Several others but don't come to mind immediately.

Hi,

there have been some good answers to the question so far. I'll add that I think the key factors are:

low(er) budget (for movies at least)
word of mouth advertisement (not constructed viral campaign).
niche market much smaller than 'mainstream'.
often have unusual 'takes' on aspects of life or plots.
extremely devoted fanbase.

and these things weave together to form a 'cult classic' that does very well.

Donnie Darko didn't do well at theatres, but sold very well on DVD. Fight Club the same. Little Miss Sunshine became mainstreamish, Waterworld was too big budget.

Interesting question, and I'm going to think hard on how this relates to novel 'cults'. Do Asimov, Tolkein, Coupland fit the bill? Or are they just genre? I guess the 'word of mouth' is more important in the written world - that random good seller that not much was invested in?
gdm.

I've always thought a cult classic movie was one so bad that people enjoyed seeing it from time to time, like "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."

I've always thought a cult classic movie was one so bad that people enjoyed seeing it from time to time, like "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."

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They can become cult classics. (Ed Wood)