THESE DAYS IT'S TOUGH . . .: Billboards bug Sarah Marshall, Sarah Marshall, Sarah Marshall and Sarah Marshall

April 17, 2008

BY PAIGE WISER This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The billboards were jarring, before anyone figured out they were promoting a movie. They said, in big black capital letters:

"I'M SO OVER YOU SARAH MARSHALL"

» Click to enlarge image

Sarah Marshall of Chicago stands in front of a promotional billboard for the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)

"MY MOTHER ALWAYS HATED YOU SARAH MARSHALL"

"YES YOU DO LOOK FAT IN THOSE JEANS SARAH MARSHALL"

They were jarring, especially, to women named Sarah Marshall.

There are dozens of them in Illinois alone, and they got no notice before they started seeing their name on taxis and bus shelters.

The billboards are meant to move tickets for "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," a breakup comedy opening Friday. The ads are called "viral marketing"; they generate buzz by word of mouth.

"Viral," of course, derives from "virus" -- and local Sarah Marshalls are indeed feeling nauseous about the whole thing. There's a fine line, after all, between ad campaigns and rude graffiti.

One Sarah Marshall, reached by phone at her place of work, was rather curt. Had she gotten a lot of calls about the billboards?

"Yep."

Would she like to share her feelings on the subject?

"Nope."

Another Sarah Marshall, 29, in Andersonville, was more forthcoming. "One Friday morning I had to get up early and go into work," she says. "The first thing I saw was a billboard that said, 'You suck Sarah Marshall.' "

She knew she wasn't the only Sarah Marshall in town. There was another one registered at the tanning salon in her old neighborhood, and their accounts would get mixed up.

But this was name recognition of a different level. At first, her friends thought it might have something to do with her recent engagement. "They thought it was an ex-boyfriend trying to get back to me," she says.

It's hard not to take it personally. Luckily, Marshall has had some experience with heckling. "Last year, there was that movie 'We Are Marshall,' " she says, which was about a high school football team. "People would come up to me and say, 'We are!' and I'd have to say 'Marshall!' "

She is looking forward to changing her name when she gets married in August.

Another Sarah Marshall -- the 28-year-old one in Terre Haute, Ind. -- says the campaign has been "interesting and annoying."

She'd run into the name problem before, when she was a graduate student at Loyola. There was another (undergraduate) Sarah Marshall.

She's not planning anything so drastic as changing her name, but she is sick of people asking her, "Hey, did you know there's a movie about you?"

Yet another Sarah Marshall -- the 74-year-old, South Side one -- heard about the "I hate you Sarah Marshall" billboard from, of all people, her minister.

"I thought he was kidding," she says. "It's right down the street from where I live." The minister was going to make an announcement in front of the congregation, to find out who was behind negative messages, until he learned it was just a publicity gimmick.

It's a shame, says Marshall: "I've always liked my name. I never thought of it as being common." Her father named her after the Sarah in the Bible, but now the name is being associated with a raunchy comedy.

She might go see it for herself, with her granddaughter. But she won't be there opening night. She'll be out of town at a church convention.

Name confusion, of course, is nothing new. It rarely grows beyond aggravation, unless you share a name with a celebrated serial killer, or Monica Lewinsky. The 1999 cult movie "Office Space" had a character named Michael Bolton who refused to go by "Mike."

"Why should I change?" he reasoned. "He's the one who sucks."

During the '50s, a game show called "The Name's the Same" boasted panelists such as Carl Reiner, Audrey Meadows and Mike Wallace, who had to guess the famous name of a mystery guest. Sometimes the celebrity namesake -- Ronald Reagan, for instance -- came out at the end to surprise the ordinary Joe.

When Britney Spears eloped with Jason Alexander, many people wondered what she saw in the curmudgeon from "Seinfeld."

Right name, wrong guy.

If you happen to share a name with a celebrity, you can join the club at myfamousname.com, along with Christina Aguilera, Louis Armstrong and Pamela Anderson. That's just the A's.

And if you're a Sarah Marshall, there may be one perk. "I'm hoping that when I go to the theater, if I show my ID, they'll let me in free of charge," says Sarah Marshall -- the Andersonville one.

There could be one major downside, too, she says: "If the movie sucks, it would really be a bummer."

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