The "Napoleon Dynamite" Problem
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
I'm reading this great article from last weekend's NYTimes Magazine about the people who are trying to win Netflix's $1 million prize for the improving their recommendation engine, Cinematch, by 10%. The contest has been going since 2006, and many competitors (from all over the world, and from a diverse array of backgrounds and expertise) have made significant improvements, but eventually they all hit a wall. And that wall's name is "Napoleon Dynamite."
There are a handful of other films, too, that are equally difficult to predict in the same way as "Napoleon Dynamite:" “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.”
I'm wondering if the reason for the volatility in people's affinity or distaste for these films is due less to the uniqueness of the films' content or aesthetic, and due more to the amount of noise made by their fans.
People love these movies for various reasons, but what they all have in common is that the people who did love them made it a point of pride. It was a more meaningful and significant badge in our society to be a fan of these movies specifically because they were not well liked by everyone. It's easy to say you liked "Wall-E," who didn't? But, liking "Napoleon Dynamite" is basically like choosing to sit with the band-geeks and LARPers in the junior high cafeteria.
Hugo Liu describes the act of listing our favorite bands, books, TV shows, and movies on our Social Network profiles as "taste performance." Having such a vocal fan community raises the stakes, and the act of saying whether or not you're also a fan becomes a more dramatic performance of your taste.
It is, Bertoni and others have discovered, maddeningly hard to determine how much people will like [Napoleon Dynamite]. When Bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like “Lethal Weapon” or “Miss Congeniality” and tries to predict how any given Netflix user will rate them, he’s usually within eight-tenths of a star. But with films like “Napoleon Dynamite,” he’s off by an average of 1.2 stars.
There are a handful of other films, too, that are equally difficult to predict in the same way as "Napoleon Dynamite:" “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.”
I'm wondering if the reason for the volatility in people's affinity or distaste for these films is due less to the uniqueness of the films' content or aesthetic, and due more to the amount of noise made by their fans.
People love these movies for various reasons, but what they all have in common is that the people who did love them made it a point of pride. It was a more meaningful and significant badge in our society to be a fan of these movies specifically because they were not well liked by everyone. It's easy to say you liked "Wall-E," who didn't? But, liking "Napoleon Dynamite" is basically like choosing to sit with the band-geeks and LARPers in the junior high cafeteria.
Hugo Liu describes the act of listing our favorite bands, books, TV shows, and movies on our Social Network profiles as "taste performance." Having such a vocal fan community raises the stakes, and the act of saying whether or not you're also a fan becomes a more dramatic performance of your taste.
3 Comments:
That's interesting. About 5 years ago, I was walking with the pre-husband in Boston on what must have been the hottest day ever. Some guy on the street handed us free passes into a test screening of a new movie, and we went in mainly for the air conditioning.
Upon entering, someone handed us a chapstick, a pin that said "Vote for Summer", and a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt. We had no clue what was going on.
Then we went in and watched the movie. Everyone in the audience laughed all the way through it, and gave it a standing ovation.
It was fascinating to see how the hype for Napoleon Dynamite grew over the next few months, from people quoting the movie to the magnets on my mom's fridge that she got at Hot Topic (don't ask).
I think this hype machine did make a lot of people automatically dismiss the movie itself, which is a shame.
But if you take away the hype, and even the quirk-factor in the movie, you can distill it down to it's true subject matter: friendship, with a little bit of first crush.
I know this post isn't really about Napolean Dynamite, but it's funny, because the films that are apparently hard to predict ratings on are really represent classic themes and storylines, just wrapped in a different package. But I guess most people just see moon boots and chapstick, Tokyo karaoke in a pink wig, CGI fish and a yellow jumpsuit.
It is rather odd, still. You'd think a more vocal fan community would probably make it easier rather than more difficult to equate to other movies.
Like I could tell you which of my friends like ND, and I could probably start picking off other movies they like rather easily. They probably would want Arrested Development DVDs, whatever Michael Cera movie, then maybe something in a Seth Rogen, perhaps.
If it's WALL-E or Bond, or whatever summer blockbuster, well hell - just list any movie and that works.
Or maybe I'm making that "focus group of one" mistake...
You're right, Amber, that at its heart, ND had a classic and universal human story, and I think that that's a big part of why people liked it. But, so did Wall-e. Any decent, well-liked movie is going to have some universally compelling human drama to it.
Paul, you're describing the opposite side of the issue. (I haven't finished the article, yet, maybe they cover this.) I would agree that if you knew someone really liked ND, that should be a big help in figuring out what else they might like. But, these contestants are having trouble with the opposite: knowing that someone likes Knocked Up and Arrested Development, for instance, is evidently not a reliable predictor of whether or not that person would like ND.
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