Everyone Who Lives in Manchester-by-the-Sea Got Free Amazon Prime For One Year
All right.

Kenneth Lonergan’s indie cry-fest about the lesser Affleck and his tragedy stubble moping around a seaside village in Massachusetts, Manchester-by-the-Sea was set in an actual town called Manchester-by-the-Sea. If you saw the movie, you are aware that it was very sad and tragic, almost oppressively so; at the center of the film is a terrible and unspeakable tragedy that to me, felt like a bit egregious in how fucking SAD it was, but that’s just me.
If you didn’t see the film, here’s the trailer and some fun news: it’s coming to Amazon Prime on May 5 and to celebrate that release, Amazon gave the residents of the actual town a year-long Prime membership for free as a thank you, I guess?
(Please note for those who have not seen this movie that the trailer makes it look much lighter than it actually is. I do not cry at films because my heart is a hard stone, but I cried during this movie because god, it’s a LOT.)
Anyway, in a massive marketing stunt and perhaps a “sorry for associating your very nice town with unrelenting tragedy and a copycat crime,” Amazon gave all 5,182 residents of Manchester-by-the-Sea free Prime memberships for a year, and also some popcorn.
“We wanted customers in the town to enjoy popcorn and a movie on us,” Amazon Video vp Greg Hart explained Monday in a statement. “Manchester by the Sea is a masterpiece representing the best of cinematic storytelling. In other words, it is wicked awesome.”
How nice of Amazon to bestow a very wealthy town the gift of free shipping for a year because Kenneth Lonergan decided to make a sad movie populated by a spate of questionable Massachusetts accents and lots of time spent on a fishing boat. Do you think that people who actually live in this town were innundated with sympathetic looks and questions from strangers after the movie’s release? The movie was indeed a movie — fiction! — and not truth, like, say, “Shit Town” was. All I saw when I watched Manchester-by-the-Sea was a lot of sprawling seaside homes that I would give my first three toes on my left foot to live in, if offered.
But! This is the way we market now. If you’re a giant online retailer like Amazon for whom 5,000 $99 prime memberships is a drop in the bucket, then why not?
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