Film marketing expert Chris Bulla was buried this morning at a funeral in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. A memorial to his Hollywood friends is being arranged down the road by friends who worked with him in the peak years at New Line. When Deadline revealed the marketing guru's death in a New Year's Eve post, the outpouring from the community was exceptionally strong. Especially considering that Paula has had his way with helping bring success to blockbuster films Alone at home to Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, The Sixth Sense and Se7en. And then suddenly leaving town and never looking back.
Whether one is a direct part of Hollywood or circling it as a journalist seeking a scoop, this is an all-consuming industry and we're all working hard on our individual versions of the hamster wheel. One can't help but wonder sometimes what it would be like to just step down. Tom Biggert, Paula's partner since they met in graduate school in Atlanta 46 years ago, has an easy answer. He saw firsthand the highs and lows of Paula at New Line, Disney, and Fox, the painful exits from each and the generous settlements that gave him enough money to leave Hollywood to buy a spacious guest house — with four rooms for rent — on the water. In Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. They called it the “Merry Meeting House,” where the same tenants came year after year.
“Chris was a huge personality, you know, but I think he was as happy having guests and making beds as he was in Hollywood,” Biggert said. “We've lived in four different places, Atlanta, where we met in grad school, New York where we started our careers, Los Angeles, and then Provincetown. So those are four distinct seasons. They're all very different. And I think we felt when people ask what's your favorite place… Well, every place was perfect for where we were in our lives.
That's not to say Bulla didn't feel remorse, nor does that seem to include his love of good beer that may have contributed to the liver disease and cardiopulmonary failure that took his life.
“He was going to be 70 on March 6, so for two years he was talking about turning 70, 70, 70, 70,” Biggert said. “Maybe I'll keep something, because it was very special and important to him.”
Paula is remembered as a larger-than-life personality, yet earnest and outspoken when she felt strongly about the best way to fill seats in theaters. But he was also funny and had a strong guiding influence on the staff under him, whom he treated in the same way that filmmakers used to respect them. This was evident when Paula was at the peak of his career, making the rounds at Cannes.
“He called everyone an idiot,” Biggert recalls. “Hey, Idiot. And I think we were at the Cannes Film Festival and all these people thought that was his recognizable name for them. But then they realized that he called everyone Idiot, Idiot, Idiot. Hey, Idiot. So he changed it to the more generic, 'Hey, Idiot.' “My dear.” Only some figured out why: “It was because he couldn't remember their names. Filmmakers certainly did, but a lot of people did, he didn't try his best, so he would call everyone an idiot. He certainly had no filter.
Paula more or less brought that character to the East Coast.
“He was very generous with friends here, picking up dinners all the time,” Biggert said. “He loved making muffins and he would give them out to the neighbors. He would do that every week, twice a week. He would make blueberry muffins and put a lot of berries in them, and they would kind of crumble. But they were great. And people loved them.”
“He was always generous in spirit. He would be in the store, and everyone would know. And he was loud. You might remember that, how loud he was. People would say, 'Well, I know Chris was in the store. I heard him, but I couldn't tell which aisle it was.' In him, he knew he had never met a stranger, just like his mother, he would start talking to whomever they were, and when they went away, he would start talking to everyone else and never stop talking.”
In Hollywood, that wasn't always a virtue.
“He jumped more than I thought he should,” Biggert said. “There would be an offer, maybe a little better title, and he jumped into this stuff. And I don't know, I think he could have stayed a little longer at every job myself, and he got fired a few times. I don't know all the details, but when he got fired from Warner Bros., I know Bob [Daly] And Terry [Semel] In exit interviews, he said, “You talk too much.” I'm sure he did; He never shuts up in marketing meetings. He controlled the room and didn't stop. But as I say, it's always more complicated. But he had a talent for crystallizing the message in the film. on Sixth sensehe included the line “I see dead people.” He was proud of that too. This was one of his major battles in Hollywood, to put that line in marketing materials. The producer and his boss thought this was a terrible idea, because they wanted it to be revealed during the movie.
“Chris put it on anyway. That's why he got fired, basically. And that movie went on to make millions, and I don't know how many people would have seen that movie, without that tagline 'I see dead people.'” Bruce Willis, in his career, would not have been The best billing clerk there used to be, and there was no one else in it. What could you sell, but that?”
Bigert said Paula's superpower was being able to distill the film's appeal into an image and concept, and his favorite part of the job was designing the one-sheet poster that was key to selling the film and getting an audience. Opening weekend. One can see an early cut of Alone at home It was viewed as a straight-up Road Runner v Wyle E Coyote cartoon, but Pula leaned to a different audience. He saw the potential for it to become a Christmas film with lasting potential.
“He was very proud of him Alone at home“I think so,” Biggert said. “Someone mentioned it the other day Christmas story to [Pula]when he appeared on TV recently. He said to them: Alone at home It was a much better movie. And I won that battle. This is the best Christmas movie of all time. You watch a lot of Christmas movies at this time and everyone is rating them. He is Die hard Christmas movie or not? There is no longer any doubt about it Alone at home It was a Christmas movie. I think what he meant was marketing Alone at homeContrary to saying, Christmas storyMaking it an even more successful film as a result.
Paula thrived in his early days at CNN when the news network was finding its footing. He would draw illustrations on the shoulder. Ted Turner insisted that newscasts end with uplifting stories, and Paula quickly prepared the visuals. This led him to work on brands like TV Guide, and eventually launching io Gray Advertising Beverly Hills, 90210. It was this success that prompted Barry Diller to realize Paula's value and bring him to Hollywood at Fox. Paula then found a niche in New Line Free Cinema as that studio moved from genre films to blockbusters, leaving its mark on films such as Seven, the mask and Dumb and dumber. But his penchant for candor got him out the door several times.
“The politics in Hollywood weren't too bad, but when he got to the bigger studios, it was terrible,” Biggert said. Each firing brought a generous settlement, and at some point, Bola decided to leave before he wore out his welcome.
“He thought, 'Well, he's already been in every studio and no one's going to hire him again,'” Biggert said. And also about the whole consulting thing, he said, “I don't want to do consulting. They bring in a consultant when there's a problem, and then you have to solve the problem, and everyone on staff hates and resents you. I think he's had enough. He was ready to leave everything behind. “He wasn't very emotional about it and I don't think he missed it very much,” Biggert said.
“He wasn't bitter. He didn't feel like he wanted to go back to working in Hollywood, and it was great for him to have a change of scenery and move to Provincetown. It's a really beautiful, historic place, where the Pilgrims first landed, even though everyone thinks that was Plymouth.” It's a small town. In the summer it becomes a big city, and then it's a small town for me so it's the best of both worlds and Chris really loved that.
In Hollywood, Paula would hound colleagues to take toiletries back to their hotels, collect them and distribute them to organizations that help the homeless. In Provincetown, he and Biggert redirected charitable giving to the Provincetown Soup Kitchen, where they volunteered for decades. Paula was probably happier there.
“He loved the soup kitchen,” Biggert said. “We've been volunteering there ever since we got here, almost 22 years. He loved doing it. Instead of being in the kitchen, he was sitting on the floor and manning tables. He didn't care that this was the lowest-level job in the place. He was talking to… Everyone and he had this thing where he would suddenly sing at the top of his lungs that song, 'Everybody Dance Now' and he would sing the first two lines, and all of a sudden he would probably do that every time he was there and people would laugh at it and join in. And they'll say, “Oh, that's Chris. They knew he was there.”
Chris Paula
Courtesy/Provincetown Soup Kitchen/Facebook
