Neil Simon’s 1981 play Fools was written during his divorce from Marsha Mason. The divorce agreement stated that Mason would be entitled to the profits of his next play. The legend in the theater world has it that Simon deliberately wrote Fools with the intention that it would be a Broadway flop, so that Mason wouldn’t get very much money.
Was it a success anyway? Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. It didn’t last long on Broadway, closing after just 40 performances. On the other hand, it’s been performed pretty regularly since then in regional and community theaters, and has been adapted (twice!) as a musical. It’s not up to Simon’s usual standards, admittedly, but as plays go, it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it hasn’t been utterly forgotten the way a genuinely bad play probably would be.
Long before the internet, I heard the story of the $100 Corvette/Cadillac/Mercedes a number of times. Same premise … husband ran off with bimbo (but without his car?!?), his lawyer demands the wife sell the car and wire him the full purchase price. Some variations had it be the family luxury car, and she had to split the income with him. One friend told it with a mounting sense of incredulity: “My brother couldn’t believe his luck. He kept asking 'Did someone die in this car? Is it stolen? And the wife kept saying ‘Hurry up, first hundred takes it, and I’ve got a bunch of buyers on their way…’”
By the way, I’m amazed there were this many real-life “Springtime for Hitler” examples. Good work by Doper Detectives, Inc.
Not sure there is very much of that to be found. The most likely would be an album someone half assed to fulfill a contract that ended up being a commercial success. I suppose there could be movies like that too. Not thinking of any specific examples though. Maybe something from Prince?
While perhaps not “designed to fail”, nobody expected Phil Collins’ first solo album, Face Value, to do anything at all. The other two existing members of Genesis had already released solo records which had immediately faded into obscurity, so why would their pudgy lead singer be any different?
At least a single. The Turtles (specifically Howard Kaylan) were having a fight with their label about the band’s direction. Kaylan wrote the most cliched, trite set of pop lyrics he could come up with.
It turned out to be a bright, peppy tune that went to #6 on the charts.
How about the 21st episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, “Fish Story”? This is the episode where Herb dresses up like a giant carp (KRP spells “carp,” you see) and gets into a fight with the WPIG mascot, dressed in a pig suit, while Johnny and Venus are taking an on-air sobriety test to demonstrate the dangers of drunk driving, with Johnny’s reaction time getting better the more he drinks.
Although credited to the pseudonym “Raoul Plager,” this episode was actually written by series creator Hugh Wilson. He had been getting a lot of pressure from CBS to add more physical comedy and general “wackiness” to the show. He wrote “Fish Story” in response, packing it with slapstick and very broad humor. He was quite confident that the audience would reject that sort of low-brow “wacky hijinks” style of comedy, thus demonstrating that it just wasn’t right for WKRP.
Much to his frustration, the episode was a huge success. It got fantastic ratings and became a fan favorite, which bugged Wilson for the rest of his life.
It’s not that it was supposed to fail, but it was not supposed to succeed, which is a slightly different thing.
Roger Corman owned the movie rights to The Fantastic Four, and made his own FF movie before the rights ran out, so that he could retain them. He didn’t tell the cast and crew that this was what was going on, apparently, so they gave it their all on a ridiculously low budget.
as we’ve discussed on this Board (recently, in fact), the movie IS awful, but not as bad as you’d think, and it has achieved a bit of cult status. not exactly a success, but then, it wasn’t exactly a failure, either.
No, Corman’s FF was a definite failure-bad reviews, available only on bootleg for the longest time, and didn’t come close to making back it’s minuscule($1 million) budget.
