If you’ve ever gotten a Facebook invite to a sneak preview movie screening at Century Evanston Theater, odds are Logan Groover wrote it. For more than a year, it’s been his job to promote Universal Studios releases at Northwestern, and if you’ve read one of those messages, he’s doing it right.
Groover, a double major in economics and RTVF, remembers the time he realized he might need a backup for the film degree for which he had come to NU. “I was in a film class freshman year,” he recalls, “and a girl raised her hand and said, ‘I think the color blue represents World War II.’ That kind of scared me-there was nothing about WWII in the film-so I wanted a backup plan.”
Two and a half years later, Groover’s girlfriend, also an economics major, was looking for jobs in the financial industry, months before most film internships started hiring. Feeling like he should get his act together, he started looking for jobs using iNet Internship Service and found one that looked appealing: campus marketing representative for Universal Studios. The job was for promoting Universal releases on campus, and as that rare combo Econ/RTVF major, being asked to promote movies was a perfect synthesis of those interests. The application process was quick, and he was soon hired as Universal’s only representative at NU.
Groover says he found the job to be a relatively simple one-at least in theory. He became responsible for managing Universal’s presence on campus, from creating a Facebook page to alerting students about new releases to maintaining a cordial relationship with the employees at the Century Theater in downtown Evanston, where screenings are usually held. He promoted movies like “Fast & Furious,” “Duplicity,” “The Fourth Kind” and the upcoming “Get Him to the Greek,” answering student questions about the movies and spearheading promotions to raise campus awareness. One competition involved students voting to bring “Get Him to the Greek” stars Russell Brand and Jonah Hill to campus, but it didn’t work out. “The University of Illinois had more votes than us,” he sighs.
At NU, he’s been a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity since he was a freshman, though he says he tries not to use his friendships for promotional purposes. After graduation, he wants to produce films-what else?-and will attend UCLA’s Producer Program with the goal of producing character-based films, like one of his favorites, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” It’s the blend of action and character he finds exciting, which has popped up in a lot of the movies he’s promoted on campus. That will be in the future; right now, he’ll stick to passing out the tickets before screenings, making sure film reels arrive on time and standing in front of the 140-or-so people at the “Get Him to the Greek” show, as he does now, to welcome them to the theater. “Hi, everyone, thanks for coming out,” he says. A few minutes later, the movie begins.
