I guess the movie couldn't have been filmed without some extraordinary cooperation from Goodyear. You see their name on the blimp for a great part of the movie's run time, so that's advertising, yet the storyline makes people associate Goodyear blimps with a horrific terrorist plot. I'm kind of surprised they'd be happy with that.
"The truth 24 times a second."
I saw the film at a special showing with Robert Evans at the AFI(DC). Evans said Goodyear cooperated because Frankenheimer had made GRAND PRIX years before in which Goodyear was prominent.
I also remember during the Q&A Mike Nichols standing up and saying he almost had a heart attack during the last half hour
I'm also surprised that Goodyear would lend its name to this, but on the other hand, the connection between terrorism and a blimp and tires seems extremely indirect, even if this weren't fiction. I never got how seeing a Goodyear blimp would want to make you buy their tires anyway.
shareIt's just a way to keep the name in peoples' minds. We usually buy things we know or think we know if the alternative is a lesser known brand.
I guess that's true to an extent. It was an early form of product placement, for those who are swayed by such appeals.
Then there was Goodrich Tires, "the ones without the blimp." Without knowing anything about tires, I'd lean toward them based on their focus on the product rather than the distractions.
Whether you chose Goodyear or Goodrich you still chose the one that you knew about and not the no name brand.
I had read that the director - if he was not able to procure the Goodyear blimp - was going to rent the only other large blimp in the world at that point (housed in Germany, no less), paint it silver, and use that as the prop.
"It's people..."
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I should note that I love airships -- nonrigid, semi-rigid, and rigid -- and would like to see them more in movies. I even rented the silly Disney movie "Island at the Top of the World" because it features a beautiful semi-rigid airship.
"The truth 24 times a second."
I love blimps too. The scenes in the James Bond film A View to a Kill are also pretty superb. There's a number of documentaries about blimps on YouTube which are very interesting.
shareI think it's great free advertising for Good Year. I never associated Good Year with terrorists - anybody can get hijacked. I have used Good Year tires for years and never associate my tires with this movie. Of course I doubt such cooperation would be given if the movie were made now. These days, all corporate decisions are fear-based.
shareGoodyear did insist on one change in the script and that was to establish that Lander and all other blimp pilots were freelance operatives rather than Goodyear employees as they would be in real life, because that way Goodyear wouldn't come off as having not done a proper background check on "one of their own."
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