Question re: Secretary (Spader/Gyllenhaal) movie poster

There’s a thread from October/November about this movie here, but I have a more specific question.

Tonight I went to see Frida at the local art flick/foreign film venue and before it started they were giving away a few door prizes. My girlfriend managed to wrangle a poster from the guys giving the stuff out.

It was a promotional poster for the movie Secretary. The guys that worked there told us that it was a “collector’s item” as it had been deemed too racy for public display and had been ‘pulled’ or ‘recalled’ by someone or other. One of the guys even stopped us on the way out to reiterate his concern that we value it for the treasure that it was and that we shouldn’t put it up for auction on eBay unless we “really want[ed] to make some money.”

I hadn’t heard about that before. I’ve been wanting to see the movie, but what with its limited theatrical release I missed it in the theatres, and buzz about it has been minimal. But they talked as if the whole poster flap had been some big controversy. I did some searching on google and found nothing. I turned to IMDb and couldn’t come up with a thing.

Inspiration struck and I actually did check eBay. I found many auctions of the “Version B” poster and one for the one that we got – starting at $15.99 with a reserve price of $19.00. So I guess it’s not that much of a catch after all.

I’m just wondering if anybody heard anything about a conflict about the poster or had any information about that for me. I expect this thread to drop like a rock, but maybe I’ll get lucky.

Just curious, what does your poster show that was considered so “racy”?

No I’m sure it wasn’t pulled for the reasons they say. The MPAA does approve all poster before they go out to theatres. What you have is a TEASER poster. When a FINA poster comes out it frequently comes with a letter telling the theatre manager to take down all the teaser one-sheets and only display the final one-sheet. The theatre managers sometimes read things into those letters that are not there.

Badge the poster is a photo of a woman bending over. The camera is behind the woman and you can’t see the top half of her body at all. She is dressed but it’s a pretty nice shot. But it does not have James Spader (the major star) on it. The final one does.

This sounds like the poster you’re talking about:

http://us.imdb.com/EGallery?source=ss&group=0274812&photo=secretary_teaser_ka_150dpi.jpg&path=gallery&path_key=0274812

Sorry, I meant to post a link to a picture of the poster. It’s the one orr linked.

All I had to go on was what the guys at the theatre were saying – Zebra, your explanation makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

No problem, and BTW my job is in theatre marketing.

Interesting poster. Time and Newsweek both had reviews of the movie, but neither mentioned the poster “controversy.”

Completely off topic, but: The Piedmont? If so, I’ve had them overstate to me the value of a door-prize before.

Here is a current ebay auction for this poster, and the “Buy it now” price is $19, so it doesn’t seem to be that valuable.

The most I see paid for this poster on eBay is about $16. Most are much less.