Selling the Show

If you like your job - or if you just like the money you get from doing your job - you don't openly badmouth your workplace or your work environment in front of your Target Audience.

The same applies to actors, directors, producers - everyone involved in a production down to the backstage workers (if they want to be hired for another production).

Rampant (for good reason) in DVD Bonus Content and interviews is the fact that almost every person involved talks about what a great production it was, how they all got along great, and how this production is the greatest they have ever worked on. The job doesn't end when the director yells "cut!" - famous people involved in large productions with millions of dollars at stake can't go right home and tell their family and friends what a terrible work environment they are in, and how much they hate their (equally famous) boss and coworkers.

In short, whenever you see someone going on and on and on about how great the production/actors/everything is, they're selling the show regardless if they really like it or not. It's practically required in their contract, so it's ubiquitous in Hollywood and all related industries.

The truth can come out later in a person's Compromising Memoirs (which may even reignite interest in said production!), but when the production is released, you want to get people excited about it to sell tickets/copies, and that's easier if everyone thinks you had fun making the production.

Notable Instances Of This Trope:

• Hilarious Outtakes never show the director or actors getting actually angry about a scene that isn't working, or visibly frustrated with a fellow actor who keeps flubbing a line, though you know it must happen.
• Part of the movie Galaxy Quest was how the actors had to continue to sell the show despite how they actually felt about it.

Jason Nesmith: You WILL go out there. Sir Alexander Dane: I won't and nothing you say will make me. Jason Nesmith: The show must go on. Sir Alexander Dane: ...Damn you.

• Megan Fox notoriously failed to do this and openly compared Michael Bay to Adolf Hitler, single-handedly torpedoing her career almost overnight.

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